After looking at the first picture in AV Herald with a birdseye view of the accident scene and where the airport is located, why is it reminding me of KE-801? Different weather, which means different approach methods, but still looks like 5X-1354 is CFIT.

Jesus Christ the wreckage isn't even cool yet and you have it down as a CFIT incident based on nothing more than baseless speculation?

Quoting GSPSPOT (Reply 5):
I lived in Birmingham and spotted at BHM extensively in the mid and late 90s, even after they lengthened 18/36... I have NEVER seen anything but GA or corporate a/c use that runway. This is puzzling.

I spotted heavily between June 2008 - June 2010 and I would concur with that observation.

I lived at Birmingham for a couple years till last fall and spotted/photographed there extensively (as you can see on the database) and I only saw a southwest plane land on 18 one time. Last summer, I was on a ORD-BHM flight and we landed on 18, but it was very late (flight had been delayed, gee what else is new?) and it was close to midnight so I did not get any video or pictures. I was puzzled and quite surprised when i saw the terminal off to the right!

These crash threads always become ungainly, and it's difficult to read through the whole thing, so forgive me if this has been covered already.

Did liveatc.net or anyone else manage to capture atc comms before the crash?

And early reports indicated the pilots' bodies were found 100 yards from the wreckage, but photos from the scene show the cockpit relatively intact. It certainly doesn't look like anyone could have been ejected. Has this been explained?

It's the not the angle, it just looks like they flew through the last step down. Think about it, they would of broke out of the ceiling and saw the approach lights but not the hill. Look at the distance from the threshold on the plate and the impact of the aircraft and it appears that they never leveled off on that last step down.

It might seem odd at first that the crewmembers did not survive given that the cockpit area is basically intact despite heavy damage. After all, people survive car wrecks all the time with similar or even greater levels of damage. The thing is, cars have crumple zones and airbags to protect occupants in crashes. Airplanes don't.

Everyone is focused on 18 because of where the aircraft impacted, but I think there is possibly another alternative. That is that they were given the sandbox and were holding for 6/24 to open (only 10 minutes) and started to make a turn and something went wrong. I thought the plane was much closer to the airfield having not seen any images until now. I guess we'll know soon enough. The whole thing is weird.

Quoting AS737MAX (Reply 11):1308140900-1308141000 Wouldn't that be 9am central-10am central? And the crash was a 4:49am? So both runways were open or is it zulu time?

It is Zulu time. Since BHM is 5 hours behind Zulu time (no daylight savings in Zulu time, which is why it's different from London during the summer), that would make the runway closed from 0400-0500 local time.

I don't know if this has anything to do with the accident, but when I went to work tonight at UPS they had all of the employees take a Hazardous Materials test. Basically just asked us how to identify them and make sure they had been audited. It was strange as we haven't done that as long as I was an employee. Perhaps they are just airing on the side of caution.
Pat

Quoting 93Sierra (Reply 18):'s the not the angle, it just looks like they flew through the last step down. Think about it, they would of broke out of the ceiling and saw the approach lights but not the hill. Look at the distance from the threshold on the plate and the impact of the aircraft and it appears that they never leveled off on that last step down

Combine this with a runway a little shorter than you normally use, no vertical approach aides and the "black hole effect" giving you the feeling you're higher than you really are = CFIT.

Not ready to buy that quite yet. Level segments on a non-precision are not uncommon and we don't know if they were on the LOC or RNAV. Even of you flew past it, your point of impact is going to be a lot closer to the threshold.

They have a PAPI on Rwy 18 at BHM and like I posted earlier. I often flew light aircraft into this airport and the short Rwy 18-36 before it was lengthened and it does create a "Black Hole Effect" when landing at night.

Quoting Boeing717200 (Reply 20):Everyone is focused on 18 because of where the aircraft impacted, but I think there is possibly another alternative. That is that they were given the sandbox and were holding for 6/24 to open (only 10 minutes) and started to make a turn and something went wrong.

In the press briefing this afternoon, the NTSB said they were on approach to Rwy 18.

Interestingly, it does seem like there are some packages that may be intact in the field. I wouldn't think the NTSB would allow them to take anything, though I suppose looters could some by and steal if the whole perimeter wasn't sealed off.

I also spot in BHM every so often (I live there) and I agree with the others on it being very rare to see airliners on 18/36. I've only seen one landing, a SWA 737 coming to land on 36, and I wasn't even spotting at that time, but driving on the Interstate (I-59) and was about to cross the approach area and noticed it.

I took a pic earlier today, uploaded to the queue, but if it doesn't get approved, here it is:

Click thumbnail for larger size. Taken the afternoon of the accident, hence the haze. Rwy 18/36 is temporarily closed as you can tell. I had to take the picture from the an overpass on the interstate (not fun!!!) and zoomed to my camera's max level in order to get this angle to give some perspective of the runway, terrain and approach.

Quoting jreuschl (Reply 28):I also notice that there's a UPS truck on the road nearby. What is that doing there?

In the incident of aircraft accident, the local station manager is made the nominal local company accident representative for the corporate investigation team. I'm sure he or she was woken quite abruptly with the news - if they were not already working on the early shift - and headed over as soon as contingencies could be made. A company vehicle would generally be used as a mobile command center as well.

I'm not usually like this, but while driving in Waikiki today I pulled up next to a UPS truck at a light and glanced at the driver and gave him a shaka and yelled "sorry to hear about earlier today". To which he replied with a shaka and a heartfelt thank you.

Its rather sad and working for the UPS airline this is all we talked or thought about today. When our pilots came to fly our flight, I found out that the FO knew one of the deceased and had actually talked to him the night before the fatal flight.

An early morning approach to a runway without glideslope and no calls to ATC about problems unfortunately seems to indicate that instrument monitoring and altitude monitoring could be a factor. If this is the case we come back to the discussions about pilot instrument monitoring during an approach, preparations before landing, procedures, pilot fatigue, ability to fly visually, optical illusions etc etc

Quoting type-rated (Reply 37):I imagine not all items were totally destroyed in this incident, like books, etc. Their tracking page states "All items will be disposed of." I'm not sure that will be true.

It actually says 'all merchandise discarded' as they cannot attest to the condition of any one shipment at this time.

If this had been an Asian carrier, we would be up to the 4th thread already. With a load of disparaging comments how their training is inferior, cannot fly to save themselves etc.

It disappoints me that the posters particularly in the US automatically suspect either foreign made, or foreign operated aircraft are inferior.

This accident like many before, and ones still to come demonstrate how important it is to have lateral and vertical guidance. Not having that available in today's world when the technology is readily available is like not having seatbelts fitted to cars.

Quoting type-rated (Reply 37):I imagine not all items were totally destroyed in this incident, like books, etc. Their tracking page states "All items will be disposed of." I'm not sure that will be true.

I'm sure its going to be cheaper to just pay off the "insurance" on almost all packages. Procedures are in place, limits thier liablity. Only reason I could see them trying to locate and inspect cargo is if there is extremely high insurance value cargo onboard.

I lived in Birmingham and spotted at BHM extensively in the mid and late 90s, even after they lengthened 18/36... I have NEVER seen anything but GA or corporate a/c use that runway. This is puzzling.

I spotted heavily between June 2008 - June 2010 and I would concur with that observation.

Quoting Bruce (Reply 7):I lived at Birmingham for a couple years till last fall and spotted/photographed there extensively (as you can see on the database) and I only saw a southwest plane land on 18 one time. Last summer, I was on a ORD-BHM flight and we landed on 18, but it was very late (flight had been delayed, gee what else is new?) and it was close to midnight so I did not get any video or pictures. I was puzzled and quite surprised when i saw the terminal off to the right!

I lived in the Birmingham area for over 15 years (hence part of my user name) and never saw commercial planes land on 18, but lo and behold my last two flights into BHM (Jan and Apr this year, both on UA ERJ145 from IAH) both landed on 18 and at night. So it must certainly be less uncommon than it used to be, my guess is with a lot of runway repairs going on recently.

Quoting 7BOEING7 (Reply 23):Quoting 93Sierra (Reply 18):
's the not the angle, it just looks like they flew through the last step down. Think about it, they would of broke out of the ceiling and saw the approach lights but not the hill. Look at the distance from the threshold on the plate and the impact of the aircraft and it appears that they never leveled off on that last step down

Combine this with a runway a little shorter than you normally use, no vertical approach aides and the "black hole effect" giving you the feeling you're higher than you really are = CFIT.

No question. When you get into the area where this crash took place there is nothing but darkness from the air, and I can see how easily a crew could become disoriented.

My thoughts and prayers to the families and friends of the two pilots..

Most of the aviation world, and also many of the posters on here have a REACTIVE style of mentality. Airlines don't like to be proactive because they like short term profits and to be honest many of them HOPE in management that some of the flaws and some of the holes in the realm of aviation doesn't catch them with an accident, but it does. There are a lot of areas that could use fixing and many items on the aviation safety guy's to do list. The reality of it is that most things are calculated on money and profit, and that puts a tighter squeeze on the lower ends of the working world such as bank tellers, pilots, representatives of companies and so on, you get the idea. Pilots are in this group of end user type throngs. We fly the airplanes based on the technology and the training available, and based on the cultural aspects of the person sitting next to you as well as the operational culture of the airline and the nation you are in. Combined with the flight environment, technology, fatigue and other factors such as company SOP rules, regulations, we end up with a certain behavior and certain expectation pattern...

It would be nice to have airplanes and airports with the most advanced technology all over the place, but I fly to airports that don;t even have a terminal building adding tons of safety and security issues on its own. Obviously something within all these chains of events were outside of the control of the flight crew for this accident and thus the nature of an accident is something is out of control and not going according to a nominal flow or plan....
having said that, before you post about why didnt they do this and how come that and they should have this...one should think about their own lives and how many shortcuts we take, how many rules we disagree wtih and most importantly how many times a day or week do we have to make up our own procedures and flows to compensate for the missing ones in a so called structured environment....the cause of this accident like MOST others I have seen or worked in is going to be something extremely SIMPLE...yet the root cause of such behavior will come from a deep stem of unorganized company aviation and design culture as well as training.....

Quoting type-rated (Reply 37):I imagine not all items were totally destroyed in this incident, like books, etc.

Their condition is irrelevant, any package in that aircraft now belongs to the NTSB for however long they please.

How do you know that one of these innocent-looking packages still in good shape doesn't contain the wireless transmitter that sent a signal to the bomb that blew up the aircraft?

(Of course I am not implying terrorism had anything to do with this crash, just using it as an example of the NTSB's need to keep all packages for the purpose of their investigation).

Besides, from a customer service point of view, I don't know that UPS would want to deliver any package in the aircraft even if they could. The packaging box for your brand new laptop may look intact on the outside, but the screen inside is split in two, or the hard drive is damaged, or.... Repeat ad nauseam with every package. Better get rid of them now rather than deal with the cost of possibly getting a customer damage complaint on every single one....

Quoting blueflyer (Reply 48):Their condition is irrelevant, any package in that aircraft now belongs to the NTSB for however long they please.

The NTSB has no ownership over the aircraft or its contents. It is an accident site, and will be released once they have their information. Anything removed from the aircraft should be returned to the operator when they are no longer required for the investigation.

Quoting blueflyer (Reply 48):Their condition is irrelevant, any package in that aircraft now belongs to the NTSB for however long they please.

No I dont think so. The NTSB is investigating accidents. As long as the items are necessary for the investigation they will be kept. But I assume they are released to their owners as soon as NTSB do not need them for investigation purposes any longer. Any other routine would be surprising.

Quoting tridum (Reply 38):Its rather sad and working for the UPS airline this is all we talked or thought about today. When our pilots came to fly our flight, I found out that the FO knew one of the deceased and had actually talked to him the night before the fatal flight.

Even with pilot groups of hundreds, it is a very close knit community. Everyone seems to know one another.

Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 45):I'm sure its going to be cheaper to just pay off the "insurance" on almost all packages. Procedures are in place, limits thier liablity. Only reason I could see them trying to locate and inspect cargo is if there is extremely high insurance value cargo onboard.

Since this flight was full of mostly overnight freight, it is now past commitment in any case and every package needs to be paid out for regardless of damage. At least that is what would happen at FX. I'm assuming UPS does things the same way.

Was the PIC a regular into BHM? Reason I ask is, you're assigned a smaller runway, if the aircraft is heavy with cargo it means you'll need more braking distance, so you try to land sooner on the runway. If it's a runway the PIC has rarely landed on, then do the approach at night, plus the black hole effect, it's not a good mix... Of course, many other factors need to be taken into account that we're unaware of at this time that only the NTSB investigation will reveal.

Quoting zeke (Reply 42):It disappoints me that the posters particularly in the US automatically suspect either foreign made, or foreign operated aircraft are inferior.

Did you READ this thread? Or just come here to flame. I haven't seen one post in this thread that placed any blame on "foreign made or operated" aircraft. By far, most are already blaming the pilots (which isn't fair yet either).

Quoting zeke (Reply 42):If this had been an Asian carrier, we would be up to the 4th thread already. With a load of disparaging comments how their training is inferior, cannot fly to save themselves etc.

It disappoints me that the posters particularly in the US automatically suspect either foreign made, or foreign operated aircraft are inferior.

I have been following both threads closely and have not once seen anybody blame the aircraft or the manufacturer itself. In fact, many posters have already contributed this accident to pilot error/CFIT.

It disappoints me that a well respected member of this community, such as yourself, would continue to spew your anti-US vitriol when the majority of us Americans have absolutely nothing against foreign made products or foreigners themselves.

Quoting zeke (Reply 42):If this had been an Asian carrier, we would be up to the 4th thread already. With a load of disparaging comments how their training is inferior, cannot fly to save themselves etc.

It disappoints me that the posters particularly in the US automatically suspect either foreign made, or foreign operated aircraft are inferior.

This accident like many before, and ones still to come demonstrate how important it is to have lateral and vertical guidance. Not having that available in today's world when the technology is readily available is like not having seatbelts fitted to cars.

The problem is that many airports with airline traffic have runways without such guidance. It is also possible that airports have such equipment but they are temporarily out of order. So airline crews are expected to be able to handel approaches and landings without such guidance in visual conditions. They are also supposed to be able to follow an imaginary glide slope to a specific decisionpoint in an approach. Todays automation has led to a dgeradation of that ability among airline crews all over the world. If this is a factor in this accident remains to be seen. But fact is that this approach had no glide path so it could be an issue here also. We dont know yet.

Quoting HPRamper (Reply 51):Since this flight was full of mostly overnight freight, it is now past commitment in any case and every package needs to be paid out for regardless of damage. At least that is what would happen at FX. I'm assuming UPS does things the same way.

Not exactly, when a shipment is late, the cost of shipping is refunded, not the cost of the item being shipped. In this case, the aircraft and it's contents will be written off as an insurance loss and paid out to the aircraft owner and the owners of the shipments. It is highly unlikely anybody will ever receive their shipment from this accident, unless there is something of extraordinary value that is undamaged, even then probably not. Further risk of exposure to the insurance company due unknown damage, smoke, contamination, etc is just too high. It's easier just to make the payment, have the payee sign a settlement, and be done with it.

The UPS sort/distribution facility is on the North side of 6 on a road that runs parrallel to 6/24 outside the airport controlled area, behind the reserve base and then the other side of the hill before the threshold of 18.

Quoting zeke (Reply 42):If this had been an Asian carrier, we would be up to the 4th thread already. With a load of disparaging comments how their training is inferior, cannot fly to save themselves etc.

Isn't that funny how it works on A.net?

Quoting Gatorman96 (Reply 57):It disappoints me that a well respected member of this community, such as yourself, would continue to spew your anti-US vitriol when the majority of us Americans have absolutely nothing against foreign made products or foreigners themselves.

The blame game (above) disappoints me. In fact, a poster on the first thread linked a blog post disparaging Asian pilots and their mentality which was wholly ridiculous. See post #252 in the first thread. Yet, seasoned posters like myself and Zeke get shot down for even mentioning the fact.

Quoting zeke (Reply 49):The NTSB has no ownership over the aircraft or its contents. It is an accident site, and will be released once they have their information. Anything removed from the aircraft should be returned to the operator when they are no longer required for the investigation.

Often mail is removed quickly and sent on.

What I was actually wondering by the time of the middle of the first thread was high value shipments. I mean a shipment of gold or diamonds can be very small. A kilo of diamonds or 10+ kilos of gold are very valuable. I actually shipped (with FedEx) a bit of jewelry in the mid 6-figure range, and I regularly ship items in the 4/5-figure range for business. If it's a large corporation shipping a wholesale cache of precious metal or gemstones.......I wonder what happens. I'd want my items or an insurance payment quickly.

I lot of the items in the front main-deck would have seemed to survive, unless they're easily breakable like electronics, glass, ceramic. Diamonds, gold, platinum, gemstones....they're not easily breakable or burnable even if their packaging is.

The part showing a 777 hitting the sea wall at SFO on a clear, blue sky, day with no wind while all other flights that day landed perfectly under the same conditions and no distress calls from the pilots at any point.

Watching the video immediately left the majority of us to believe that pilot error caused the crash and it's fairly common knowledge that "asian culture" is very respectful to authority figures and that particular aspect of the culture could have played a major roll in the events leading up to the crash. Within the first hour of the crash that was a much more plausable reason for the crash than 3 pilots not noticing the plane was both very low and very slow for a very long time.

Quoting XT6Wagon (Reply 45):I'm sure its going to be cheaper to just pay off the "insurance" on almost all packages. Procedures are in place, limits thier liablity. Only reason I could see them trying to locate and inspect cargo is if there is extremely high insurance value cargo onboard.

I know from experience, UPS has lost some packages I have shipped in the past, one time they lost 2 of the 5 packages I shipped out one day and they are not the easiest company to work with regarding getting reimbursed in a timely manner.

UPS’s policy is they pay up to $100,00 per package for loss or damage, no matter what the contents are unless optional insurance is taken out for whatever value the shipper declares.

To get reimbursement for lost or damaged packages, you have to show proof of what was in the package like an invoice before they will issue payment.

Once the NTSB releases the packages that survived the crash, unless they are contaminated or considered hazmat from the accident, I am sure they will eventually be delivered to the addressee, the packages are still the property of the shipper until delivered.

If UPS follows their standard policy, the shipping charges will be refunded to the shipper because they were delivered past the guaranteed delivery time, normally the shipper has to file a claim for reimbursement of the shipping charges to get the refund, but maybe UPS will have a change of heart and automatically refund the charges.

Quoting 0NEWAIR0 (Reply 56):That's becuase that's exactly what happened with the OZ crash and we all knew it within 5 seconds of seeing the video of the crash.

That is my point exactly, we have no idea what caused the OZ accident. The video means zip. Even hundreds of investigators working with the NTSB could not determine the problem after a week.

All we know about this accident is that the main runway was closed, and they would have needed to shoot an approach without vertical guidance to land. How things unfolded is not known. For all we know this could be as simple as setting the wring QNH, or not taking into accoutn the airport elevation.

Quoting Gatorman96 (Reply 57):It disappoints me that a well respected member of this community, such as yourself, would continue to spew your anti-US vitriol when the majority of us Americans have absolutely nothing against foreign made products or foreigners themselves.

It is not " anti-US vitriol". This is the 4th hull loss for UPS in the last 10 years, (A300, 747, DC8, MD11) . If this had been a foreign airline, and this being its 4th hull loss in the past 10 years, there would be all sorts of calls for restrictions to be placed upon them and claims their training is deficient. To illustrate my point with an example, Philippine Air Lines has had one hull loss in the past 10 years (2007, an A320), and faces FAA restrictions today on what equipment they are allowed to operate to the US. Now objectively can you see UPS and Philippine Air Lines being treated the same way ?

Quoting Navigator (Reply 59):The problem is that many airports with airline traffic have runways without such guidance.

It does not require any ground based equipment, just needs the effort for someone to design and publish a chart with VNAV guidance from well above the FAF so aircraft can be stable for the last 4-5000 ft. Nobody flies a jet airlines visually by the seat of their pants, it is still requires a lot of instrument cross checking.

Quoting zeke (Reply 68): This is the 4th hull loss for UPS in the last 10 years, (A300, 747, DC8, MD11) . If this had been a foreign airline, and this being its 4th hull loss in the past 10 years, there would be all sorts of calls for restrictions to be placed upon them and claims their training is deficient.

I'm not sure what sort of training would prevent cargo fire hull losses. Can you help me with that? The DXB accident might arguably have had a different outcome with better training, but I don't know of any issues with piloting at PHL.

Quoting zeke (Reply 68):It does not require any ground based equipment, just needs the effort for someone to design and publish a chart with VNAV guidance from well above the FAF so aircraft can be stable for the last 4-5000 ft.

At least in the States, almost every major airport has one or more approaches without vertical guidance. Even at SAN--a one runway airport--I don't believe 9 has any vertical guidance. Are you suggesting that that in itself is a problem?

Quoting type-rated (Reply 37):And UPS is notoriously difficult to get them to pay for damaged items that they ship.

I imagine not all items were totally destroyed in this incident, like books, etc. Their tracking page states "All items will be disposed of." I'm not sure that will be true.

I worked for UPS for several years. They'll pay out for every package and the packages will eventually become the property of UPS, after the investigation is complete. In my hub, we had an entire warehouse full of damaged packages or packages that had become "lost" that had been paid out on. Once a year they'll go through and auction the contents off.

Quoting zeke (Reply 68):Even hundreds of investigators working with the NTSB could not determine the problem after a week.

Hearing no offical word from the NTSB within a week of the crash is NOT the same as the NTSB not determining the problem of the crash within a week. Within hours, a few days at most, of starting an investigation the NTSB usually has a pretty good idea where the investigation is going to lead them in most cases... whether or not they say that publicly.

I think you will agree that all of these aircraft will give a magenta VNAV path to follow. You can also build the approach from nothing at all... Airports with significant terrain obviously don't allow for a clear constant descent path. BHM isn't one of those airports. The terrain restricts the runway from having a certified glideslope, but the rise in the terrain isn't so sharp that it disallows a normal landing. The visual illusions to that runway can be harsh though.

Quoting xjet (Reply 72):You can also build the approach from nothing at all...

And that has been an air safety issue into airports that are not in sea level for a long time, procedures should be designed properly on the ground, charted & published, and available in the FMC. "Building" approaches in many airlines is not allowed, esp home made VNAV ones.

Quoting xjet (Reply 72):The terrain restricts the runway from having a certified glideslope, but the rise in the terrain isn't so sharp that it disallows a normal landing.

That is saying to me the glideslope would not have the terrain clearance ?

Quoting xjet (Reply 72):The visual illusions to that runway can be harsh though.

I was looking at some weather maps There was a cold front which passed through BHM roughly at the time the accident occurred. There was a 15-20 degree temperature variant on either side of the front. Such a variant is significant in the U.S. south across the Summer. I'm sure the NTSB is all over it.

Quoting NBGSkyGod (Reply 73):
Getting away from the OZ UPS training issues, has anyone else heard the reports that the aircraft was on fire before it crashed? I don't have a link but I heard it in passing on the local news.

There was one eye witness that claimed this, but we know how accurate those eye witness reports can be.

Quoting zeke (Reply 68):It is not " anti-US vitriol". This is the 4th hull loss for UPS in the last 10 years, (A300, 747, DC8, MD11) . If this had been a foreign airline, and this being its 4th hull loss in the past 10 years, there would be all sorts of calls for restrictions to be placed upon them and claims their training is deficient. To illustrate my point with an example, Philippine Air Lines has had one hull loss in the past 10 years (2007, an A320), and faces FAA restrictions today on what equipment they are allowed to operate to the US. Now objectively can you see UPS and Philippine Air Lines being treated the same way ?

I don't really care to get into the politics of this..... Perhaps Zeke is correct in stating that since it is an American carrier, there is an assumed level of safety. However, unfortunately for your argument, it appears that there are some assumptions and misinformation/holes in the arguments made......

Upon further investigation, the MD-11 incident was actually not a hull loss, as the airplane was returned back to service - N250UP is still flying. This was considered pilot error but there were no fatalities and no hull loss.

The DC-8 incident had no loss of life, and apparently the source of the fire was never conclusively identified - so we certainly cannot say that this was related to crew error or poor training.

The 747F incident where the plane did crash was found to be related to fire due to CARGO (lithium ion batteries, spare us the 787 comments please) - not due to error on part of the crew or mechanical malfunction of the plane itself.

The present A300 incident is still out for investigation and nothing appears certain at all.

Quoting jetstar (Reply 67): UPS’s policy is they pay up to $100,00 per package for loss or damage, no matter what the contents are unless optional insurance is taken out for whatever value the shipper declares.

That's the difference between liability and insurance.

The carrier has a liability which he usually limits up to the legal obligations. The carrier offers optional insurance.

The shipper has a liabilty to insure, but he can decide not to insure in which case the difference between the carriers liabilty and his loss must go out of his pockets.

The clarify, I only speak of building VNAV guidance in visual conditions. Under no circumstances should a raw RNAV be created with the intention to fly in IFR conditions without conventional navigational aids as a primary source. Any procedure flown below VMC minimums should certainly be charted.

The proliferation of LPV and LNAV/VNAV approaches will continue. There are just a lot of airports, runways and airplanes to get up to snuff before there will be total coverage of the airspace system.

In short, we are in agreement. Your points are very valid. Vertical guidance of some sort should always be available, especially in a heavy jet to a shorter runway.

I'm not sure what you fly but the XJET and the California makes me think either a C750 or an ERJ. I know the new Citation Ten can fly LNAV/VNAV or LNAV + V approaches as well as LPV approaches. Can you in your current equipment?

Quoting Speedbored (Reply 81):I wonder whether this eyewitness could have seen sparks created by the power lines that they took out shortly before impact.

I agree. "On fire before it crashed" leaves out the obvious question: Did the witness know that it hit a whole bunch of stuff before it crashed? In the dark, who could possibly know that it hit some tree beforehand, which caused some sort of 'fire' (or the impression of one).

Having briefly skimmed the previous few threads on this subject, I have just a couple of comments:

1: Eyewitnesses are useless. Every single airplane that crashes has an eyewitness that heard "sputtering," be it an A300 or a Curtiss Jenny or an L-23. 99.999% chance nobody anywhere actually heard anything like "sputtering" from the Pratts on that jet.

2: Flightaware is uessless. I couldn't believe the number of posters quoting flightaware "data" like it came right from the black box. For all intents and purposes, flightaware.com is completely and wholly inaccurate ALL the time and should NEVER be referenced for ANYTHING.

3: I'm similarly befuddled by the number of non-pilots suggesting techniques for approach and landing, especially a heavy Airbus, as if they have practical, working knowledge of their suggestions. I get that it's a public forum, but many of the comments have been dead wrong and/or utterly hilarious. If you haven't ever looked at an approach plate in your life, much less actually flown one in a UPS A300 to BHM, you might want to check yourself. No wonder the news gets this crap wrong all the time, all their "experts" must come from here.

Anyway, whatever, doesn't matter. Terrible thing that happened, let's hope they find the cause soon and we can all do our best to avoid it happening again.

Quoting N766UA (Reply 89):Flightaware is uessless. I couldn't believe the number of posters quoting flightaware "data" like it came right from the black box. For all intents and purposes, flightaware.com is completely and wholly inaccurate ALL the time and should NEVER be referenced for ANYTHING.

As has been pointed out, the data in this case comes from the plane's own transponder, which apparently was an ADS-B transponder. If this data is inaccurate, then someone had better notify the FAA because this is what air traffic controllers are relying on to track these planes and keep them separate. It's GPS data so it should be extremely accurate.

With ADS-B, you can literally watch an airplane on approach, down to landing on a specific runway, and all the way to the specific gate at an airport. I've done this, and verified the accuracy of it (not that it needs my verification, but I just did it for fun while sitting at JFK airport one day).

Not every plane is equipped with ADS-B or seems to have it turned on (I'm not sure what the rules are; I *thought* every new passenger plane needs it now but I live around JFK and JetBlue planes rarely seem to have it on), but in the previous thread someone did say that all UPS planes are so equipped. It's planes that are *not* equipped with ADS-B transponders that have inaccurate results on sites like Flightaware and Flightradar24. Those are just tracked by radar.

(FR24 actually lets you turn those off, since the data's also delayed and combined with the inaccuracy, that makes it useless data for most purposes.)

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 92):As has been pointed out, the data in this case comes from the plane's own transponder, which apparently was an ADS-B transponder. If this data is inaccurate, then someone had better notify the FAA because this is what air traffic controllers are relying on to track these planes and keep them separate. It's GPS data so it should be extremely accurate.

You may be right about that. The quotes I saw in the previous thread though started out with data from Flightradar24, which then got conflated into "sites like Flightaware and Flightradar24" and now we're just talking about "Flightaware data". I don't know what data Flightaware actually uses as I don't use that site that much anymore, but the original vertical speed data in question here should actually be coming from Flightradar24. It may be that the Flightaware data actually more or less agreed in this case and so people who do use that site were also quoting it in the earlier thread.

I don't understand all the talk about the 'black hole' effect etc. This approach has a PAPI that is required in order to make the approach at night. If I'm not mistaken there are also REIL?

So, if they stay above the MDA until they have the runway/PAPI in sight, and they stay on the PAPI-indicated path until they are past the REIL, what difference would visual illusions created by the runway in the darkness make?

The clarify, I only speak of building VNAV guidance in visual conditions. Under no circumstances should a raw RNAV be created with the intention to fly in IFR conditions without conventional navigational aids as a primary source. Any procedure flown below VMC minimums should certainly be charted.

The proliferation of LPV and LNAV/VNAV approaches will continue. There are just a lot of airports, runways and airplanes to get up to snuff before there will be total coverage of the airspace system.

In short, we are in agreement. Your points are very valid. Vertical guidance of some sort should always be available, especially in a heavy jet to a shorter runway.

Vertical guidance is just guidance, BUT an airline crew like any pilots are required to be able to make a perfect visual approaches with circling if required without any guidance either by VNAV, ILS or VASIS. Thats a requirement and that is performed at runways without guidance. The pilot should be able to take down his airliner by just looking at the runway, altimeter, IAS etc. Basically the way you fly a Cessna 172. This is what you are required to be able to do in a 747-400 or whatever. But in real operations pilots use more instruments than that for cross checking. But a visual approach is basically visual any way you twist it. The pilots should be able to fly it. And trouble is that all automation has degraded the skill in this area in recent years. Thats one element in the Asiana accident and it could very well be an element in the crash we discuss here now.

Quoting Smittyone (Reply 96):So, if they stay above the MDA until they have the runway/PAPI in sight, and they stay on the PAPI-indicated path until they are past the REIL, what difference would visual illusions created by the runway in the darkness make?

Theoretically speaking, the PAPI should be trusted and the illusions shoved to the back of the mind. However, sometimes that is easier said than done. The illusion at BHM to me isn't as much black-hole but has to do with the sloping terrain. Additionally, a friend of mine flew into BHM last week and reported that the PAPI on 18 and 24 were inoperable at the time. After the accident the NOTAMs didn't reflect this, but they had been updated to cover the entire runway being closed. I'm not sure where to find archived NOTAMs or if the NTSB has covered the status of the runway 18 PAPI.

Quoting Smittyone (Reply 96):So, if they stay above the MDA until they have the runway/PAPI in sight, and they stay on the PAPI-indicated path until they are past the REIL, what difference would visual illusions created by the runway in the darkness make?

If the 'blackhole' illusion was the cause of accident, they would be victims of falling for the illusion and ignoring / misinterpreting the PAPI / REIL. That's why it's called an illusion. Your mind believes something to be true that isn't.

Quoting Navigator (Reply 97):The pilot should be able to take down his airliner by just looking at the runway, altimeter, IAS etc. Basically the way you fly a Cessna 172. This is what you are required to be able to do in a 747-400 or whatever. But in real operations pilots use more instruments than that for cross checking.

I'm not disputing that at all. It is certainly a requirement of any pilot, and a skill that should be maintained. However, best practice is to have a backup of some sort. That's the discussion that I was engaging in with Zeke. I in no way think pilots should be allowed to forget how to fly visually -- in any size aircraft. This whole month I've been flying into an airport under construction that has absolutely zero visual guidance, PAPI or otherwise. It is perfectly normal and actually fun. However, after sitting at the sort facility for 5 hours in the middle of the night, one would probably prefer to have as much backup as possible.

As to your point about automation.. It is very easy to become rusty in the stick and rudder department. Those skills are "use it or lose it". I think its a great idea for guys in the cockpit to turn off the flight directors and fly by looking out the window whenever the proper conditions prevail.

There were two crashes of twin piston engine planes at White Pass in Washington state. They were each so violent that the emergency transponders did not work. Were it not for eye/ear witnesses it may have been weeks, not day(s) before they were found.

Do those who think that "eye witnesses" are useless suggesting that those witnesses should have kept their mouths shut? Silly

Quoting Navigator (Reply 97):Vertical guidance is just guidance, BUT an airline crew like any pilots are required to be able to make a perfect visual approaches with circling if required without any guidance either by VNAV, ILS or VASIS.

No, airline crews are not required to do anything perfectly. We end up flying at the back of our body clocks more nights a month than we care to remember. We just need to do it safely. FYI, where I work, we have banned NDB and circling approaches, it is a risk that has been managed out of our operations by changing our SOPs.

Quoting XJET (Reply 98):I'm not sure where to find archived NOTAMs or if the NTSB has covered the status of the runway 18 PAPI.

Is it a requirements under Part 91 to have PAPI available when landing for carriers like UPS ? I know it is for some operators, cannot remember which part.

Quoting zeke (Reply 68):Now objectively can you see UPS and Philippine Air Lines being treated the same way ?

Should they be treated the same way?

I have no opinion about PAL one way or the other, but there are a variety of differences between this particular incident and pehaps others that you'd compare it to (such as accidents involving Asiana, PAL, etc.).

1. The Asiana accident happened in broad daylight at a major airport and was captured on video. People are going to comment much more in such an accident because there is more to talk about, more interest, etc. This UPS incident happened at night, at BHM, and had no real eyewitness or video sensationalism to go along with it.

2. UPS accidents/incident, by nature, are going to be discussed somewhat less because frankly they are carrying packages and not passengers. There's less to relate to, less (though not "no") human element, and just doesn't get as many people's emotions and responses going.

3. UPS and PAL and Asiana and whomever else you want to point to are going to each have different attributes that will lead people to respond a certain way. With UPS, I can imagine there is a sense of professionalism and rule following because they are perceived as a well-oiled machine. With passenger airlines, you just don't have the same impression all of the time, even if it's irrelevent or misguided.

4. When WN had what appears to be a hard landing recently, all the anti-WN people (or people who have an opinion about their pilot's skills) came out in force. It's just human nature that people with an opinion are going to share it. With UPS, people are going to have less of an opinion because they have less exposure to or experience with UPS flightcrews.

5. In the 787 threads one of the common arguments going back and forth is that the 787 is treated the way it is because there are fewer birds having flown far fewer hours/years than other makes, thus giving it a much more questionable safety record vs say an A330. Well, "perhaps" some people look at UPS as a very large, worldwide company and are going to allow for more things to go wrong when there are more flights for things to go wrong with? Who knows?

Human nature is funny, but I just fail to see how coming on here and stirring the pot this way accomplishes anything other than to get people worked up over something (in this case, OZ214) that most of us have moved on from or simply don't want to get into in another thread.

Quoting frmrCapCadet (Reply 101):Do those who think that "eye witnesses" are useless suggesting that those witnesses should have kept their mouths shut? Silly

Of course not, however everything they say should be taken with a large grain of salt, especially when they are reported by the media.

Quoting Navigator (Reply 97): BUT an airline crew like any pilots are required to be able to make a perfect visual approaches with circling if required without any guidance either by VNAV, ILS or VASIS

Perfect? You do realize that Pilots are humans. Hell even the ATP PTS has allowances of +/- 10 knots and degrees in many cases.

Quoting XJET (Reply 98):Additionally, a friend of mine flew into BHM last week and reported that the PAPI on 18 and 24 were inoperable at the time. After the accident the NOTAMs didn't reflect this, but they had been updated to cover the entire runway being closed. I'm not sure where to find archived NOTAMs or if the NTSB has covered the status of the runway 18 PAPI.

The approach plates for both the LOC 18 and the RNAV 18 approaches include this remark:

When VGSI inop, procedure NA at night

I take that to mean that if the PAPI were out of service at the time, they were not legal to shoot an instrument approach. Would they have flown this strictly as a visual approach, at night?

Quoting frmrCapCadet (Reply 101):Do those who think that "eye witnesses" are useless suggesting that those witnesses should have kept their mouths shut? Silly

I haven't seen anyone suggest witnesses should "keep their mouths shut".

That's different, however, from suggesting we take their recollection of specific details about what was going on onboard an aircraft prior to it crashing as a factual account of what actually happened.

So far we have *one* witness who claimed to see fire, we have *one* witness who claimed to hear "sputtering". There's no pattern here, and these people aren't experts, nor were they expecting to see a plane crash. They're recollecting things now that they would have had no real reason to retain before the fact. Even the fact that an airplane's "flying low" isn't so unusual that you'd remember every little thing about it - I once saw a JetBlue plane fly over my house at about 200 feet (I live close to JFK, but not at an approach angle, so this was crazy to me) but other than the airline, I could not tell you a single thing about that flight. I don't even know definitively if it was an A320 or E190, and I didn't even remember just after seeing it. I *think* it was an A320. And I know what I'm looking for.

If that plane had crashed, even though the low flyby was unusual, I'd have to mentally go back and try to reconstruct what I saw, now with the new knowledge that I didn't have at that time that something was wrong on that plane. I'm going to be trying to think of anything I might have seen that was unusual, and with hardly any actual memory to go on, I wouldn't doubt that my mind might "fill in the gaps" with something I didn't actually see.

It's different to rely on witnesses to tell you where they saw an event than to ask them for specific details about that event. A location is generic - it's a big picture memory, and if you can remember where *you* were (which is pretty easy), then you can tell someone something happened there. Details are small picture memories, though, and they're not directly connected to your own experience, so you're less likely to remember them and more likely to confabulate your memories of them.

Quoting N766UA (Reply 89):1: Eyewitnesses are useless. Every single airplane that crashes has an eyewitness that heard "sputtering," be it an A300 or a Curtiss Jenny or an L-23. 99.999% chance nobody anywhere actually heard anything like "sputtering" from the Pratts on that jet.

Eyewitnesses may be useless, but they may also be very helpful and only a really incompetent investigator rules them out entirely. They are firmly in the "trust, but verify" category for me. Further, have you actually looked at what some of the eyewitness accounts are. Here is one:

While I wouldn't take what he says as gospel, I do give it more credence than a normal eyewitness account. The actual language in stories also may not be the witness exact language. A news story can group a number of accounts that engines didn't sound right into a single "sputtering" line. So do I take the above account to mean that the engines backfired--No. Do I take it as a decent investigative lead that the engines may not have been performing normally--Yes, but verify.

I used to process damage claims / inspections for UPS a few years ago. Although I never worked on an airplane crash, I did sometimes have to work on trailers that were involved in accidents. The packages that were obviously damaged were discarded and report filled out accordingly. Stuff that could be salvaged was repacked. The boxes that appeared to be in good condition were sent on it's way, however a note was made just in case.

Quoting zeke (Reply 102):Quoting Navigator (Reply 97):
Vertical guidance is just guidance, BUT an airline crew like any pilots are required to be able to make a perfect visual approaches with circling if required without any guidance either by VNAV, ILS or VASIS.

No, airline crews are not required to do anything perfectly. We end up flying at the back of our body clocks more nights a month than we care to remember. We just need to do it safely. FYI, where I work, we have banned NDB and circling approaches, it is a risk that has been managed out of our operations by changing our SOPs.

Airline pilots are required to be able to perform visual approaches within standards. If they cant do it they will not qualify. And NDB and circling approaches are pretty much standard at many smaller airports in the world. Most of the time those runways have PAPI. Often there is only an ILS in one direction. You can not fly into many islands i Greece for instance if you can not perform an NDB or circling approach. The Boeing 757:s going to Samos would be cancelled. And what do you do when the ILS and PAPI are U/S?? Again pilots are required to do this perfectly, nothing more nothing less.

They got a little warm, but I'm pretty confident they'll be able to get data from them. IIRC they're built to withstand fire exposure in excess of 1100°C for 60 minutes, but we've seen them exceed the specs before.

Quoting moose135 (Reply 105):I take that to mean that if the PAPI were out of service at the time, they were not legal to shoot an instrument approach. Would they have flown this strictly as a visual approach, at night?

Yes, they would. Happens often. I'll elaborate a little later.

Quoting Dispatcher (Reply 99):If the 'blackhole' illusion was the cause of accident, they would be victims of falling for the illusion and ignoring / misinterpreting the PAPI / REIL. That's why it's called an illusion. Your mind believes something to be true that isn't.

Understanding this phenomena isn't rare, how often would be expected to have two sets of eyes see the and interpret the same illusion in an identical way? (serious question, don;t know if there's a study out there). What if those same pair of eyes both had a similar level of fatigue do the odds increase?

Quoting frmrCapCadet (Reply 101):Do those who think that "eye witnesses" are useless suggesting that those witnesses should have kept their mouths shut? Silly

TO go back to the Asiana accident, lots of eye witnesses claimed to have seen the plane "cartwheel" and were immediately discounted, if not ridiculed, by "experts" hear and on other websites. When the video was made public, the wing of the 777 was seen to rise up in a manner that appeared, from a distance, like a cartwheeling airplane. So, the eye witnesses should be interviewed, and their testimony added to the data. Perhaps a remark they make will be the key.

Now, for a soapbox:

UPS, FedEx, and other cargo carriers operate in an environment that most passenger carriers (in the US at least) rarely deal with. They both operate into smaller airports in the middle of the night, when often instrument approaches are out of service for repair and runways are closed for servicing. There may or may not be a tower in operation. Weather data is basic and no ATIS available. We dispatch to airports with no instrument approaches available or a circle maneuver from a closed runway with an operable LOC to the open runway with no instrument approaches. We have created procedures for having only visual approaches available. We operate often with the same basic airmanship I learned flying a C-152 in high school, from the pilot controlled lighting to the CTAF call outs on downwind and base and final. Throw in the challenges of night flying and arriving at prime fog time and you have what, IMHO, is a much more challenging operating environment that you average pax carrier operates in.

And on top of all that, you're fighting circadian rhythms and a natural inclination to want to sleep. Prolly spent the day before in a hotel some where where day sleeping isn't the easiest due to just general noise of people coming and going. And yet, they were carved out of improved rest requirements. It's luck, or perhaps excellent airmenship, that no one on the ground was injured. We won't know until the NTSB releases the CVR/FDR data. Did both pilots fall victim to an illusion? Would they have recognized the illusion if they had both not been flying all night? Did the airplane fail in a way so catastrophic that no time for a radio call was available (Aviate, navigate, communicate... calling out comes last)? No one knows yet. Hopefully the NTSB will piece it together and we'll all be safer in the future.

"Although research has not yet discovered why pilots tend to keep the visual angle of the runway constant under black hole conditions, they have discovered that the condition is universal. You WILL be fooled if you try to conduct a long, straight-in approach over featureless terrain using only out-the-window references. "

It sounds like black hole approaches are predictable. I assume, however, they (or the danger of them) aren't marked on charts or briefed for (like, say, a missed approach and G/A)?

So it looks like, for some reason, the airplane was very close to the ground (maybe landing-like), but there was no runway underneath it. If the reason is pilot error, black hole illusion, etc, wouldn't the GPWS/EGPWS warn the pilots that they are very close to the ground? Or is it too late when the GPWS gives an alarm?

Quoting zeke (Reply 63):It is not " anti-US vitriol". This is the 4th hull loss for UPS in the last 10 years, (A300, 747, DC8, MD11) . If this had been a foreign airline, and this being its 4th hull loss in the past 10 years, there would be all sorts of calls for restrictions to be placed upon them and claims their training is deficient. To illustrate my point with an example, Philippine Air Lines has had one hull loss in the past 10 years (2007, an A320), and faces FAA restrictions today on what equipment they are allowed to operate to the US. Now objectively can you see UPS and Philippine Air Lines being treated the same way ?

AA777 etc, I think you all know exactly what Zeke means here. Of course there is a bias in the west against Asian/Russian/African/South American Airlines etc. both in reality and on this site. You would have to be blind not to have noticed it. Although having such a bias is perhaps human, this bias is in many ways uninformed and unfair. Zeke perhaps gave a poor example in UPS, what if he had said Fedex, how many MD-11s have been lost in landing accidents, largely pilot error related?

As another member has cautioned, this is getting off topic so I will not elaborate further. I am making this point in an attempt to appeal for more balanced comments and more care to be taken to check facts before making comments which slate non western based airlines. I support Zeke in this regard.

Quoting Northstar80 (Reply 110):
So it looks like, for some reason, the airplane was very close to the ground (maybe landing-like), but there was no runway underneath it. If the reason is pilot error, black hole illusion, etc, wouldn't the GPWS/EGPWS warn the pilots that they are very close to the ground? Or is it too late when the GPWS gives an alarm?

Wouldn't that depend on the airspeed and sink rate at the time the GPWS goes off? I would think that if sink rate is low and you are not near stall speed, you have enough time for the engines to spool up and gain airspeed. However, if your sink rate is significant and you are near stall speed, you may not have the 5-7 seconds (from time of control input) needed to get the engines turning fast enough to generate the lift you need. Can any experienced pilots confirm or deny that's right?

Quoting Hmelawyer (Reply 101):A news story can group a number of accounts that engines didn't sound right into a single "sputtering" line.

No, there's an actual witness who said "it sounded like the engines were sputtering, like they ran out of fuel." This is what everybody's quoting. It's on CNN right now on video, if you want to see it.

You can't discount the possibility that there was a compressor surge or something, but it seems highly unlikely on approach.

Also, on that Civil Air Patrol guy... I used to be in the Civil Air Patrol. Anyone can be in the Civil Air Patrol. As I remember it, I just showed up at a meeting with a friend who was in it, and then I was in it. I may have filled out some paperwork but I don't remember that - it certainly wasn't anything worth remembering.

As I remember it, the CAP is kind of like the Boy Scouts in that there's a central organization, but local groups operate pretty much on their own and all of them are different. Some may be more stringent, some actually less. In my area, all it seemed like you needed to be a member of the CAP was to say you were a member of the CAP. I got a card and everything. I never held a pilot's license of any kind.

I think what this guy probably heard was the plane hitting trees prior to impact.

Quoting JonssonF (Reply 109):An article in CNN states the blades in the engines look fairly intact indicating the engines were not running fast upon impact.

As is typical of many approaches at the stage they must have thought they were at (judging by their distance from the runway).

Again, you can't totally discount that something happened to one of the engines on approach, but that's extremely rare and it wouldn't cause a crash anyway - just as visual approaches are routine for trained pilots, so are single engine approaches.

Quoting boeingfixer (Reply 113):With the gear extended and the flaps down, the GPWS thinks the aircraft is landing and only issues altitude call-outs. All other modes are inhibited at this point.

I don't know if the UPS A300's have EGPWS which would have given a TCF (Terrain Clearance Floor) warning in the landing configuration.

Out of curiosity, when would the altitude call-outs start after the gear were down? 200 feet, 400 feet? I'm not making any conclusions, just curious when those call outs would have begun in a situation where an aircraft like this had the gear down and landed short. If the alarm would have started the NTSB would be able to rule out or confirm this theory that they flew into the ground once they heard the DFDR/DCVR.

I'm also interested if they could have been able to recover if they went TOGA once the alarm started. I hesitate to ask since the cause célèbre here seems to be to compare this to Asiana's recent accident which isn't prudent IMO. Every accident is different.

There are many other reasons it could have parked well short of the runway, so I'll wait for the NTSB to release some initial findings. Thanks to Zeke for dropping by and xjet for adding some insight.

As I recall you start getting the voice at 100 AGL. In theory, you can advance to TOGO and fly out. Essentially a CAT 2 missed approach. The difference I see here is with a cat 2 appr you're expecting to have to go around and ready to initiate a go around. Now for some in no way fact supported conjecture: if the crew for whatever reason wasn't aware they were too low, when the first call out came there would be a delay in reaction because it would be unexpected. Couple that with what looks like an area off rising terrain before the runway they may have went to TOGO power and arrested the descent just in time to hit and ingest trees (sputtering engines) and accelerate at full power into the terrain ahead. (I'm just guessing looking at the term in map on google).

I really suggest the following link if you would like some insight in to this accident. I'm not saying they are the same, they aren't but they are extremely similar situations (early morning arrival to an unanticipated runway after a night of freight ops).
This report will clarify for many of you the nature of operations of the freight haulers.

Flaps, Thank you for posting the link to the TLH incident. Having received my CSEL rating in Montgomery, AL. I flew to BHM a lot at night and when I landed on that runway I knew quite well about the "black hole effect" then when the runway was shorter and now that it is over 7,000 ft long. The NTSB final report should be very interesting.

Looking at the pics of the crash site, I was just wondering where these trees are that could have been hit?
Obviously they wouldn't be there now but the stumps would be at least, and all I can see is grass, so that wouldn't be an explanation for the possible sputtering from the engines would it.

Quoting frmrCapCadet (Reply 94):Do those who think that "eye witnesses" are useless suggesting that those witnesses should have kept their mouths shut? Silly

What's being discussed is that people's memories of what they saw at an unexpected and dramatic event are influence by a lot of things. Police detectives deal with this all the time. In the case of plane crashes, a lot of people are influence by either their own fears of flying, or by Hollywood depictions of crashes. It's a truism in air crash investigation that in every crash that has ever occurred, no matter what the circumstances, you will find a witness who will say that the "engines were sputtering" (picture a B-movie 172 where the engine noise is being glitched techno-style) or that the aircraft was on fire before it crashed. I think we can safety assume that turbofans do not, under any conditions, "sputter".

Quoting fxra (Reply 117):As I recall you start getting the voice at 100 AGL. In theory, you can advance to TOGO and fly out. Essentially a CAT 2 missed approach. The difference I see here is with a cat 2 appr you're expecting to have to go around and ready to initiate a go around.

Quoting peterinlisbon (Reply 119):You get the altitude call outs based on radio altitude above the ground immediately below you. This doesn't help if the high ground is in front of you.

Thank you both. In most occurrences then those altitude call outs would be made then starting around 100 AGL, assuming the gear was down? I'm only asking since they have the DCVR/DFDR now. If it's a normal approach until all of a sudden they start getting an altitude call out well before the threshold, one could infer they flew the approach too low. But, if there was talk of other factors (i.e., onboard cargo fire) before the altitude call out occurs then maybe another problem may be the cause.

Like I said above, I think it's way too early to just say one thing caused this accident. That would be just as asinine as saying bad pitot tubes caused AF 447 to crash. Many things in combination could have contributed, the main runway being closed, poor CRM, circadian rhythms, etc. Again, thanks for the pros commenting.

Quoting olliejolly (Reply 121):Obviously they wouldn't be there now but the stumps would be at least, and all I can see is grass, so that wouldn't be an explanation for the possible sputtering from the engines would it.

Yes, because you're just looking in the wrong place.

Look at this Google map - the trees it hit from the photos I've seen appear to be just on the other side of Treadwell Rd, right next to that house there between Treadwell and Tarrant Huffman.

It then followed almost that exact line of the darkened area in the field there and came to rest adjacent to where Airport Rd. becomes 64th St. N according to this map.

There's a really high quality aerial view if you zoom in - I just linked it a little further zoomed out so you can get a better idea of the overall flight path.

Quoting GSPSPOT (Reply 5):
I lived in Birmingham and spotted at BHM extensively in the mid and late 90s, even after they lengthened 18/36... I have NEVER seen anything but GA or corporate a/c use that runway. This is puzzling.

I've landed an airliner there (CRJ) at least a couple times. 7100 feet isn't short, either! I've landed a 767 on 7000 foot runways with no problem at all.

It's going to be very interesting to see what happened here... they were very low to the ground 3/4 of a mile from the end of the runway. Was there a reason for that or did they get too far behind the plane like Asiana? We'll see.

Quoting GSPSPOT (Reply 5):I lived in Birmingham and spotted at BHM extensively in the mid and late 90s, even after they lengthened 18/36... I have NEVER seen anything but GA or corporate a/c use that runway. This is puzzling.

A lot of people here seem to be commenting on the runway choice here and I am by no means singling you out, but it seems that a number of individuals don't quite understand what goes into runway choices that 121 airlines use. While this runway seems to be no where near ideal, the company and aircraft still has to have performance numbers for said runway, and if it has these numbers, then no matter what generally lands or doesn't land is irrelevant. If the aircraft has the performance to land on the runway, it can legally land. So while it may be odd, in many respects, it's completely normal!

Looking at the pictures, I still say from my experience that something isn't quite right about this crash. In the landing configuration, the engines should be spinning at a decent rate of rotation, which judging by the pictures of the engines, they barely look like they were spinning at all. It could be the way they ended up landing, but it just doesn't seem to be that curling and damage to the fan blades that would indicate rotational impact. It could be that they had a dual engine flame out on short final, for whatever reason (fuel contamination, Ice build up, or even lack of fuel) and had no time to declare a mayday! Again, I'll leave the NTSB to do their job and continue to monitor the investigation.

In the mean time, I know the UPS community is grieving and I hope the crew will RIP!

Major carriers operated DC-10 and L-1011 into KLGA for 20 years or more....runways about 7000 ft. KORD 27R is about the same length....observed 777s landing on it all the time. Of course, these runways all have full ILS and visual approach guidance.

Quoting jetfixr757 (Reply 131):
The crew got blindsided by a fast HOT fire in the
rear of the aircraft the were trying to make the runway
they tried didn't know what took them burned
the back too fast and hot.
RIP
Jet.

There has been no indication thus far of the existence of a fire on the aircraft. Both engines were functioning at the time of impact.

Quoting jetfixr757 (Reply 131):The crew got blindsided by a fast HOT fire in the
rear of the aircraft the were trying to make the runway
they tried didn't know what took them burned
the back too fast and hot.
RIP
Jet.

The crew flew a perfectly good airplane into the ground after loosing situation awareness.

Quoting jetfixr757 (Reply 131):The crew got blindsided by a fast HOT fire in the
rear of the aircraft the were trying to make the runway
they tried didn't know what took them burned
the back too fast and hot.

A while back, I was spotting with jetblast. We watched a FedEx A300 line up with 33R at BWI, and then vector over to 33L shortly before landing. Crews are busy, and given the odd hours they are flying, errors are easy to make.

Quoting jetfixr757 (Reply 131):The crew got blindsided by a fast HOT fire in the
rear of the aircraft the were trying to make the runway
they tried didn't know what took them burned
the back too fast and hot.

Are these just opinions or facts? No indication of a fire? Has the NTSB said both engines were functioned? Do we know they lost situational awareness and crashed a perfectly good airplane? Clearly according to A-net the case is closed and we might as well call it a day?

Lets wait until the CVR and FDR have been reviewed and analyzed by the professionals before we jump to conclusions!

This is what is known. According the NTSB, Both engines were running at the time of impact. There was debris from trees in an engine and dirt from impact with ground. The plane was not on fire prior to impact. There was no distress calls prior to impact.

Everybody has a right to an opinion. I'm not faulting anybody for that.

So what if it was you as PIC. The plane crashed. You and your co-pilot perished. Then the media and "amateur community" says that it was CFIT. Raking your name in the mud for the entire world to see before any investigation is complete. Your family has to see and hear these opinions and speculations blaming you for this tragedy when it could have been something else all together. You very rarely hear on the nightly news the final report that can take years to complete. All people remember is when the crash happened, hearing how you were at fault before an investigation is complete.

All we know from the NTSB as that the engines were running (they did not specify with or without abnormalities, just that the engines were still turning and burning gas) and they don't know of any fire. No distress call was made.

With no video or ATC recordings available to us outsiders, anything else is pure conjecture at this point. As further factual information is made available, then some decent speculation will be possible... at this point any statements like 7BOEING7's are wild speculation. Oh, and ***losing***

Quoting hivue (Reply 114):The latest NTSB briefing reported FOD in the form of tree debris and dirt ingested by the engines. Could account for the witness reports of "sputtering" sounds (i.e., compressor stall).

All that tree FOD (not dirt, that came after ground impact) banging around, coupled with the possibility of one engine spooling down and maybe the other one spooling up (see below) could sound like "sputtering" to a lay person used to internal-combustion engine sputtering. Ever had the fan shroud on your car engine get loose and getting banged-up by the radiator fan? Makes sense.

Quoting JonssonF (Reply 108):How about loss of thrust at the end? An article in CNN states the blades in the engines look fairly intact indicating the engines were not running fast upon impact.

Quoting cbphoto (Reply 127):In the landing configuration, the engines should be spinning at a decent rate of rotation, which judging by the pictures of the engines, they barely look like they were spinning at all. It could be the way they ended up landing, but it just doesn't seem to be that curling and damage to the fan blades that would indicate rotational impact. ...

Just to add to the speculation game as I just noticed something in NTSB's pics.

First, it has been an unusually-wet summer here, and the ground is softer than usual. Plus it rained a lot the night before and early morning of that day, so the ground was very wet.

Second, notice in the already posted pic of one of the engines (which I enhanced some)

Notice embedded dirt on at least half the fan blades, with a bit of it starting and still there towards the center part of the blades (where it would have stayed embedded longer) in the left side of the pic, then a large amount of dirt, consistent with the "line" of dirt in the fan cone. If the engine wasn't rotating a lot, it could explain the small amounts of dirt starting during initial hitting (and digging) of the blades on the soft topsoil (if you look hard enough you can discern green grass and such in that area), then all of a sudden when it really hit and dug deeper, that large line of dirt, and the blades stop rotation as there is no dirt at all in the rest of the blades. If the blades were not rotating at all, you shouldn't see any dirt at all (more or less) below that "dirt line", on either side, so they were rotating in my opinion but seemingly at a slow(er) speed.

The blades on that one are pretty-much destroyed. Fan cone also gone. Since both engines hit the ground at the same speed, it could be consistent with this one been rotating at higher RPM than the other one during impact.

Someone mentioned the crew possibly initiating TOGA. Possibly only the port engine ingested tree FOD and could have resulted in reduced RPM (or the crew shutting it down), and possibly powering up the starboard one.

That could also explain that deviation to the left after impact:

(source from Part 1 of this thread)

Like someone said, the ground impact point is on the centerline pretty-much, but then you have this veering to the left; the fwd fuselage stayed in the general direction of the impact but the rest of the fuselage came to rest 180 degrees to the fwd fuselage. That could be consistent with losing power to the port engine, a slight drop of the left wing, possibly powering up the starboard one, hitting nose wheel and nose/forward fuselage hard, breaking up, fwd fuselage section continuing, and due to rotational torque the rest of the fuselage being forced possibly into a cartwheel like Asiana's 777. The starboard wing has little or no damage of the type indicative of it sliding/dragging or burying into ground, it looks like it "flew" some post impact and came to rest almost like a pancake which would be consistent with the starboard wing coming around "flying" as the fuselage came around.

Slats, aileron, wingtip, engine pylon, etc, still attached and undamaged more or less)

Or, they just lost power on the port engine due to tree FOD and before they realized what was going on they hit the ground, possibly at an angle. Even landing power on the starboard engine and reduced on the left could possibly produce this veering to the left. Or they may have lost part of the port wing (or flaps on it) on the tree impact (from what I heard it was a large tree) and hit with the port wing low. Come to think of it, where's the port wing??? (or its remains)

Notice both engines came to rest at same area at the right of the fuselage.

One thing for certain is they the plane's forward fuselage did plow into the ground very hard; it kind of reminds me of the Red Wings Tu-204 crash at Vnukovo; it hit the highway embankment at a similar angle it seems, and even if that one hit at a much lower speed (but then again being a narrowbody) the damage to the forward fuselage area overall is very eerily similar.

ChristosBHM

PS: Just in case, no, I don't work for NTSB or I'm not an accident investigator; I just like to make educated guesses however, that's how one learns, plus some things are not exactly rocket science

Towards end of the second NTSB briefing (around the 10 min mark on the youtube recording) they said in relation to fire, they were referring to "no pre-impact fire in the engines". They did not infer there was or was not an issue with the fuselage.

A million and one possibilities. Interestingly no one seems to have noted anything about the terrain (and therefore the plane's spatial relationship to the ground) influencing the direction/outcome of impact, why one engine was more damaged than the other.... and why one engine ingested more mud than the other.... and who knows when it ingested said mud, it did not necessarily have to be during initial impact, depending on HOW the plane impacted. It appears to be a hilly area, so this looks quite complicated. In any case.... I'm not sure speculation helps, I'm more interested to see what the NTSB reports about the Black Boxes.

Everybody has a right to an opinion. I'm not faulting anybody for that.

So what if it was you as PIC. The plane crashed. You and your co-pilot perished. Then the media and "amateur community" says that it was CFIT. Raking your name in the mud for the entire world to see before any investigation is complete. Your family has to see and hear these opinions and speculations blaming you for this tragedy when it could have been something else all together. You very rarely hear on the nightly news the final report that can take years to complete. All people remember is when the crash happened, hearing how you were at fault before an investigation is complete.

Please respect these crew members and their families.

Well said Ups Pilot. I've been sitting here thinking the same thing, but didn't know how to put it into words without getting angry about it. I'm not making any kind of assumption on this. Hopefully, the facts will be known soon and the families and UPS community can try and move forward and let the healing begin.

Quoting FI642 (Reply 135):A while back, I was spotting with jetblast. We watched a FedEx A300 line up with 33R at BWI, and then vector over to 33L shortly before landing. Crews are busy, and given the odd hours they are flying, errors are easy to make.

Watching the bird swerve left was interesting!

Who says it was a mistake? There many times that aircraft will do a "side step" maneuver on parallel runways. Happens all the time!

Quoting 26point2 (Reply 125):Quoting boeingfixer (Reply 112):
With the gear extended and the flaps down, the GPWS thinks the aircraft is landing and only issues altitude call-outs. All other modes are inhibited at this point.

Not too long ago at KBRD I was in landing configuration and on short final to a newly built runway not yet updated to the EGPWS database. "Terrain Terrain" is what I heard that day at 100 feet agl.

Yes I am, but let me clarify. My statement was for GPWS and not EGPWS. Normal GPWS terrain warnings are inhibited with gear and flaps in landing configuration with the exception of Mode 1 - Excessive Descent Rate. This gives you the "Sink Rate" and "Pull Up" aural warnings.

You're talking about EGPWS/TAWS which knows the location of the runways and has a terrain database to assist in terrain awareness. In your case with no runway in the database, the EGPWS warning was valid.

There are interesting similarities between this crash and a near-crash we had here at Bradley Airport in 1995. American Airlines Flight 1572, an MD-83, was on a night approach to BDL's seldom-used Runway 15, which lacks ILS. There is a ridge obstructing the approach to that runway. The plane hit the top of the ridge and ingested tree debris into its engines. Unlike the UPS crash, the American jet was able to barely make the runway, hitting the ILS equipment for Runway 33 on the way down - but no serious injuries.

In the BDL incident, the weather was horrible, bad enough that the tower had to be evacuated due to water coming into the cab. However, in the end, the primary cause of the accident was not the weather, but the crew not resetting their altimeter upon descent, causing it to read 70 feet too high. These people got very, very lucky that night.

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 154):Of course, I know that rule, but there may be other traffic near an airport.

You can't necessarily just decide to aviate wherever you want to near an airport, can you?

Or are the go around procedures set up that you don't need to worry about traffic and you can just "go around" if you need to?

It depends, when I've done a go around the last thing on my mind is talking. Usually you are close to the ground in a low power state and not configured to climb. In most situations the traffic you would have to worry about is minimal since ATC would usually know that you've gone around regardless if you call them since they can either see your plane or will note that you have called ground.

The go around is not a major event. I don't know what you fly but you do need to announce the go around and give ATC a clue so they can help you. On the approach you should expect to fly the published map or follow ATC instructions. If you're not on the approach and have a GPWS alert then flying is first priority but you should communicate as soon as possible. I don't agree with the statement that communicating your actions is not necessary.

Quoting CosmicCruiser (Reply 157): I don't know what you fly but you do need to announce the go around and give ATC a clue so they can help you.

Oh I agree 100% that you need to announce it, but it is lower on the priority scale than cleaning up and climbing (although granted in a 2 person cockpit you have more flexibility in division of labor)

Quoting JohnJ (Reply 155):There are interesting similarities between this crash and a near-crash we had here at Bradley Airport in 1995. American Airlines Flight 1572, an MD-83, was on a night approach to BDL's seldom-used Runway 15, which lacks ILS. There is a ridge obstructing the approach to that runway. The plane hit the top of the ridge and ingested tree debris into its engines. Unlike the UPS crash, the American jet was able to barely make the runway, hitting the ILS equipment for Runway 33 on the way down - but no serious injuries.

In the BDL incident, the weather was horrible, bad enough that the tower had to be evacuated due to water coming into the cab. However, in the end, the primary cause of the accident was not the weather, but the crew not resetting their altimeter upon descent, causing it to read 70 feet too high. These people got very, very lucky that night.

The UPS accident also reminds me of the crash of TWA 128 at CVG in 1967. The Convair 880 was on the ILS to runway 18 at night with the G/S out of service. It crashed in hilly terrain about one mile short after hitting trees.

Quoting Ups Pilot (Reply 140):So what if it was you as PIC. The plane crashed. You and your co-pilot perished. Then the media and "amateur community" says that it was CFIT. Raking your name in the mud for the entire world to see before any investigation is complete.

Speculation should always be framed as speculation, but that's part of what a discussion forum is for. I don't like it either when people post their (often uninformed) opinions as if they're facts, but if I was in *any* line of work that involved me being in charge of a large piece of machinery, and on my watch that machinery was destroyed, whether or not I was alive afterwards I would certainly expect both the authorities and the public to question whether my actions had anything to do with that. That's just the nature of being part of the crew in charge of a large machine. It comes with the job.

You can look at it even more generally, and say anyone in any job whatsoever is going to have their actions scrutinized when whatever thing they're in charge of goes wrong for any reason. If the fryer at McDonald's suddenly explodes, you can bet anyone who saw it happen is going to wonder what whoever's making the french fries might have done to cause that to happen. And maybe it turns out that it was just a defective piece of equipment, but it's both natural and necessary to look at the human element.

Again, though, I do agree that people should not be framing opinions as if they're facts. At best, it confuses the issue. There *are* actual "insiders" here so if someone posts a potential cause of an accident as if it's factual, it's often hard to dismiss it outright because we don't know who that person is or what info they may have. And that can really end up steering the discussion in the wrong direction.

Quoting type-rated (Reply 143):The NTSB said late today that there were no mayday calls made from the aircraft in this incident.

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 161):Speculation should always be framed as speculation, but that's part of what a discussion forum is for. I don't like it either when people post their (often uninformed) opinions as if they're facts...

I totally agree with what you say. All of us are entited to an opinion based on facts or "facts". It does not mean it's right. Care should be taken on how we post our information so as to not turn assumptions into hard cold facts But the fact that this is a public discussion forum, it will be open to speculation and assumptions. So we all read the postings with a grain of salt. We're all brainstorming in these forums, and some of us look up to respected users like you and other for bits of useful data, information and wait for the final investigation results from the appropriate authorities.

Looking at the pictures, some packages appear in perfectly good condition. Reminds me of the car transporter carrying thousands of brand new cars which almost capsized near Alaska, most cars where undamaged, however, they were all later destroyed!

> Two hours of good quality recording on CVR.
> The crew was cleared to land on Runway 18 about 2 min before end of recording.
> FDR contained 70 hrs of recorded data including the entire flight.
> There were over 400 parameters recorded by the FDR.

Sounds like they got outstanding data from the FDR and CVR. I am happy that it survived the crash and that they will be able to use it to good effect for the investigation! They have the entire flight's worth.

In their third press briefing on Aug 16th 2013 the NTSB said, the "recorders did their job", there are good data, the cockpit voice recorder as well as the flight data recorder hold the entire flight. The captain (ATPL, 8,600 hours total, 3,200 hours on type) was pilot flying, the first officer (ATPL, 6,500 hours total, 400 hours on type) was pilot monitoring, the crew briefed the LOC approach runway 18, 2 minutes prior to the end of recording the aircraft received landing clearance on runway 18, 16 seconds before end of recordings there are two audible alerts by the GPWS "Sink Rate! Sink Rate!", 13 seconds prior to end of recording one crew member said "runway in sight", 9 seconds prior to end of recording sounds consistent with impact occurred. The flight data recorder contains more than 400 parameters requiring verification that these parameters are valid, this process takes time. It holds 70 hours of data including the entire accident flight. There were two controllers on duty at Birmingham tower, one controller was taking a break as permitted. The remaining controller observed the crash, he saw sparks and a large bright orange flash that he interpreted as breaking of a power line, he saw the landing lights, then no longer saw the landing lights and instead saw a large orange glow, he activated the crash button. There were no alerts regarding minimum safe altitude issued by his radar system. The crew started their "duty day" in Rockford,IL at 9:30pm on Aug 13th and flew to Peoria,IL as flight 5X-617 on A306 N161UP, then to Louisville,KY again as flight 5X-617 on N161UP before departing for the accident flight 5X-1354 on N155UP.

So, given these times, that would put the impact four seconds after runway in sight. If so, then it was just seven seconds from the GPWS to the crash. Will be very interesting to see what happened during that time frame.

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 167): 2 minutes prior to the end of recording the aircraft received landing clearance on runway 18, 16 seconds before end of recordings there are two audible alerts by the GPWS "Sink Rate! Sink Rate!", 13 seconds prior to end of recording one crew member said "runway in sight", 9 seconds prior to end of recording sounds consistent with impact occurred

Well that really does not tell us much more than we knew already.

I does not give us any information about their decent, rate of decent, or speed, distance or if they were even properly configured for landing. Nor does it indicate either pilot made any calls about 4 reds they would have seen on the PAPI.

The 16 second double sink rate call which would take a couple seconds to pronounce would allow about 5 seconds to actually respond and the plane to respond before the 9 second impact.

The real issue which was not addressed is what got them that low in the approach.

Quoting Maverick623 (Reply 170):While I'll let the NTSB continue doing their investigation, it really does sound like they got caught in the "black hole" effect.

We will see.
The big issue I have why they were so far below the Glide Slope.
The news conference did not address how they got there. My thought process is that they did not arrest their decent soon enough and were well under the G/S for some distance before they hit the trees.
The Radio Altimeter would be making calls if gear was down on approach. 100, 50, 40, 30, 20.
I would think they would know they were too low.

Quoting okie (Reply 169):Well that really does not tell us much more than we knew already.

It tells us that 13 seconds prior to the crash the crew apparently had no idea anything was wrong. I was surprised that there wasn't something said, even at the last second, to the effect that they were in trouble.

Quoting fxra (Reply 173):To me, this was the most significant info that came out in the brief today.

I don't follow. Why would the crew not brief the approach they planned to make?

Quoting hivue (Reply 179):I don't follow. Why would the crew not brief the approach they planned to make?

I think the implication in his post is that, if there was no briefing to that extent, potentially they did NOT plan on making such an approach, putting to rest the speculation that they were using 18 as an alternate or whatever people have been saying.

I watched the NTSB briefing today on the news and they also said the aircraft was descending too rapidly for the approach to that runway.

They also mentioned that the engines were not on fire during the approach as some eyewitnesses had stated nor were the engines "sputtering". The FDR indicated that both engines were operating normally until the crash.

Quoting type-rated (Reply 182):
I watched the NTSB briefing today on the news and they also said the aircraft was descending too rapidly for the approach to that runway.

They also mentioned that the engines were not on fire during the approach as some eyewitnesses had stated nor were the engines "sputtering". The FDR indicated that both engines were operating normally until the crash.

Yikes. That is not good (for the crew). They sure had a long night up until the accident.

This is starting to sound like the FDX crash in TLH back in 2002 (?).

Perhaps some good will come of this and the cargo carveout for the new FTDT regs will be eliminated...

This begs the question: what method does UPS use to fly non-precision approaches? The old stepdown method or a continuous descent after the FAF while still respecting intermediate altitude limits? The first may justify/explain why the crew continued an appraoch in IMC after getting the Basic GPWS "Sink Rate!" warning as it requires a larger rate of descent after each fix. Other than that, there is no justification for pressing on while still in IMC. I very much hope to be proven wrong, but this seems to be a classic case of Get-there-itis. Or just plain old fatigue, which is a lot more difficult to prove unfortunately.

Quoting Maverick623 (Reply 170):While I'll let the NTSB continue doing their investigation, it really does sound like they got caught in the "black hole" effect.

I'm not convinced. Black hole effect leads you to fly below the proper glidepath, but it will also make your flight path shallow out as you get closer to the runway after being initially steeper ( http://www.avweb.com/news/airman/182402-1.html , note Figure 6 and how the approach path changes in order to maintain the runway sight picture). The fact that they got a sink rate call from the GPWS would indicate that they were descending at a significant rate, which would be at odds with the lower but shallower approach that black hole effect would lead one to fly. And, of course, they'd have to be disregarding the PAPI. Something about that just doesn't seem to add up for me.

Quoting jfritz (Reply 181):Do you guys think that the "runway in sight" call was their first visual contact with the runway or do you guys think it may have been in response to the GPWS going off?

The fact that it came right after the GPWS call, combined with the weather at the time, leads me to believe that it was in response to the GPWS call.

They were scheduled to leave RFD at 930pm, fly to PIA, then to SDF, then to BHM. Assuming a one-hour prior show time, they would have been about 8.5 hours into their duty period at the time of the crash.

Quoting 76er (Reply 184):Other than that, there is no justification for pressing on while still in IMC.

Quoting Mir (Reply 185):They were scheduled to leave RFD at 930pm, fly to PIA, then to SDF, then to BHM. Assuming a one-hour prior show time, they would have been about 8.5 hours into their duty period at the time of the crash.

It'll be interesting to see their rest opportunities and circadian adjustment. Depending on those factors, you can be feeling pretty freaking trashed by 5am. I've never done that sort of flying, but I do plenty of redeyes which typically are much shorter duty periods. I've done a few that are 2 pilot from south america... that was just awful. Those approximated the duty period length but left later, and of course were only one leg. 3 legs including a sit for a sort would be quite fatiguing. I've found sits that are long, but not quite long enough for a decent nap are the biggest factor in fatigue to me.

Quoting Mir (Reply 185):Black hole effect leads you to fly below the proper glidepath, but it will also make your flight path shallow out as you get closer to the runway after being initially steeper

It's a bit more complicated that that. The AvWeb article is interesting but I think it puts too much emphasis on Kraft and Elworth's conclusion. Their data has been re-examined since and, while some of it supports the constant visual angle theory, some of it is not consistent. There are several other theories in play - including runway length-to-width ratios - but the fact is that no-one seems certain which visual cues are used by night-flying pilots to estimate height in the black-hole scenario.

Not necessarily. The airport could have been in sight 30 miles out. These sorts of calls are somewhat individual unless it is an approach in lower visibility where the call is made when the runway is first seen. Some pilots just say things to themselves as part of a personal habit that isn't really governed by standard procedures. E.g. A plane may be cleared for a visual approach but the habit at the published minimum altitude on the associated instrument approach is to verbally state either "runway in sight, landing" or "runway not in sight, going around".

I agree with Mir that it was probably in response to the GPWS warning.

The bothering thing is certainly the "sink rate" call which usually activates with decent rates greater than 1200 FPM or so when in a landing configuration. The more telling pieces of information will be regarding energy management during the arrival. I can envision a situation in which the plane was high and fast due to this being a fairly straight in approach. But we will have to wait for more information before speculating if that actually occurred.

First of all, condolences to the families and friends of the 2 pilots that died in this crash.

This does seem to be a CFIT situation as others have noted and given examples of as well as the some of the early information we have. The issue is the 'C' part and if it was the pilots who erred or likely to be some other factor leading to their crashing short of the airport. It is clear as they were in final approach, about 1.5 miles form the threshold of the runway, they were too low. They question is that why were they in such a landing path.

I doubt there was a fire inside the a/c, we don't know of any distress calls and most of the fire seemed to be after crashing and there appears to have been enough fuel on the a/c to feed a fire. Weather seems to be a lesser issue although it cannot be fully discounted.

Some see to want to first blame the pilots and factors connected with them from issues due to flying at night, close to dawn, after a long duty day or too dependent on automated landing systems leading to less using of common sense flying skills. Others cited the 'black hole' affect the darkness at the time of landing, along with the topography of the area leading to the intended runway. Apparently there were limited landing aids at the airport. There is the issue brought up more frequently here as to the flaws as to automated landing systems. It is possible bird ingestion in one engine could have reduced power, but that may be unlikely with what we can see of the engine fan blades and what would be damage from it elsewhere on the a/c. Someone cited a near crash landing where the altimeter reading was off by 70 feet and indeed that may be a factor. Eye (and sound) witness comments may be of mixed benefit and some of the noises may have been after the a/c hit trees and a power line, damaging the a/c and the engines. Who knows, maybe there was a faulty pitot tube was measuring their speed too slow/high or the pilots were distracted in some way.

We all do expect some answers in the next few days from the recorders. It is likely, as with many aircraft crashes several factors mix together at the wrong time to cause them.

Quoting hivue (Reply 191):Quoting type-rated (Reply 182):
I watched the NTSB briefing today on the news and they also said the aircraft was descending too rapidly for the approach to that runway.

I watched the briefing and I didn't hear that. All I heard was the "sink rate" warning from the GPWS.

The "sink rate" warning is the indicator that the aircraft is descending too rapidly. It's not runway-specific - it's based on a couple of factors, the biggest ones being height above the ground combined with vertical speed.

They were on a non-precision approach to runway 18 at Birmingham, or a visual approach backed up by the VASI and the approach plate. Note that the approach plate indicates a bit higher glide path for the VASI, and a note that without radar or dme you cannot fly the approach, and without the VASI you cannot fly it at night. Weather was VFR. There have already been experienced pilots who fly out of Birmingham who have said that they would not use runway 18 at night because of the hill on the runway approach. Since the approach is non-precision, there are a couple drop down altitudes prior to getting to the approximately 600 ft above ground minimum altitude. Therefore, more rapid descent rates to quickly step down to the next lower altitude (or to the minimum descent altitude) would be normal, and you would probably get the "sink rate" warning. If you are slightly low on the VASI you can actually lose sight of the very end of the runway due to the hill, and you might not notice it. You need to know about the situation here to be completely safe doing a visual approach at night, especially in a large jet, although 7000 feet of runway is plenty to get an Airbus with thrust reversers stopped. To get a look I flew the non-precision approach to runway 18 at night and during the day in XPlane. During the day you can clearly see the hill. At night, especially if you were not quite familiar with the terrain and you assumed the VASI would give you a clear shot to the runway, the hill is not visible until you get quite close. I wonder if the UPS ops information provided any warning info about runway 18 night approaches and the hill. In my view one of the problems with many instrument approaches is that they contain so much information that once in awhile something that seems less important can become a really big deal under certain conditions. My guess is that if they had done this approach in daylight I wouldn't be posting on this board.

Maybe you should go out and get a couple of hundred hours of flight time. Then you will be able to understand the info as the NTSB presents it instead of jumping all over another a.netter when you don't know how to interpret NTSB terminology.

It was a PAPI and the approach slope is just slightly above the PAPI angle, at a mile the difference is about 8 feet between the two. This is typical setting up the crew to be ever so slightly above the PAPI in the visual segment. If they flew through it, I'm inclined to think they were in a hurry and were maybe set up too high to start with causing them to use a steeper decent rate or possibly they didn't set their altimeter correctly and thought they were higher than they actually were. Something is missing in this equation.

Quoting robertm46 (Reply 195):They were on a non-precision approach to runway 18 at Birmingham, or a visual approach backed up by the VASI and the approach plate. Note that the approach plate indicates a bit higher glide path for the VASI, and a note that without radar or dme you cannot fly the approach, and without the VASI you cannot fly it at night

Jepp plates have 'NA' for night time mins to LOC RWY18.

Anyone know when the FAA removed BHM from the Special Qual airports list? I know it was there a few years back and you had pictorial plates for all the runway approaches for additional briefing and terrain info.

- Both AP and AT were engaged (per FDR data) throughout the accident sequence
- FDR also showed the GPWS alert, which validates what was heard on the CVR
- PAPI was flight checked, was functioning normally
- Flight controls appear to be responding normally to inputs, engines also appeared to function normally
- No indications of issues with maintenance as per inspection of the airplane's maintenance records

The fact that the AP and AT were engaged all the way down is rather interesting.

Quoting robertm46 (Reply 195): Since the approach is non-precision, there are a couple drop down altitudes prior to getting to the approximately 600 ft above ground minimum altitude. Therefore, more rapid descent rates to quickly step down to the next lower altitude (or to the minimum descent altitude) would be normal, and you would probably get the "sink rate" warning.

International IOSHA (sp?) standards forbid doing dive and drive approaches, and now require CDA approaches instead. I find it hard to believe that UPS would be doing a dive and drive. (my own airline just got rid of them, and special sim training was incorporated to practice the new style of approach).

This standard is required by many international airlines for code share/commercial reasons, and I would expect that freight drivers would be held to this standard at these major companies.

Quoting Mir (Reply 204):The fact that the AP and AT were engaged all the way down is rather interesting.

Since I'm not qualified with any a/c that have this level of AP and AT, how would this work with no ILS. Wouldn't the AP and AT just respond to the altitude the AP was set to? If that were the case - it just amounts to controlling the descent with a knob rather than a yoke (the 300 does have a yoke, not a side stick).

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 85):
Not every plane is equipped with ADS-B or seems to have it turned on (I'm not sure what the rules are; I *thought* every new passenger plane needs it now but I live around JFK and JetBlue planes rarely seem to have it on), but in the previous thread someone did say that all UPS planes are so equipped.

UPS was the first partner airline that the FAA used years ago when they began developing ADS-B.

Quoting cpsarras (Reply 144):Notice embedded dirt on at least half the fan blades, with a bit of it starting and still there towards the center part of the blades (where it would have stayed embedded longer) in the left side of the pic, then a large amount of dirt, consistent with the "line" of dirt in the fan cone.

Quoting Mir (Reply 204):The fact that the AP and AT were engaged all the way down is rather interesting.

Quoting rcair1 (Reply 208):Since I'm not qualified with any a/c that have this level of AP and AT, how would this work with no ILS. Wouldn't the AP and AT just respond to the altitude the AP was set to? If that were the case - it just amounts to controlling the descent with a knob rather than a yoke (the 300 does have a yoke, not a side stick).

Quoting Mir (Reply 201):Should be just LOC and V/S, with SPD on the autothrottle if desired.

I'm not sure about UPS procedures or how this works in an Airbus, but things are usually pretty similar. Having given the disclaimer....

In the Boeings we fly non-precision approaches in LNAV/VNAV mode with the monitoring pilot displaying the raw data for backup in an approach like this. This allows for the now standard Constant Descent Angle procedures. On the plate it shows a 3.28 degree vertical path that meets the restriction at IMTOY. In order to fly the approach CDA you have to derive a different MDA by adding 50 feet to the published minima. In this case that would be 1250 feet MSL. This ensures that if the runway lights aren't seen at 1250 feet, the go around can be initiated without ever descending below the actual minimums of 1200 feet. Most autopilots allow for the autopilot to remain on until 50-100 feet below MDA on a published non-precision approach. This all allows for a nice and stable let down that is more akin to an ILS than the way we used to fly non-precision dive and drive approaches.

Like I said, I'm not sure how the airbus' autopilot works with managed descents, etc. but I'm sure it is something similar.

Several local news organizations in Birmingham are either quoting NTSB and/or interjecting editorial comments of the local station. E.g. one local station mentioned crew motel rooms, but then added records will be checked to see if both rooms were used.

A report just on had NTSB personnel saying they will check instrument procedures of UPS. Please excuse a newbie poster who is a non-instrument rated private pilot, as such NTSB announcements may very well be their sop.

Both issues were referred to in the NTSB press briefing this afternoon. In Louisville, both crew members signed out "crew sleep rooms" that UPS has for crews, however they will be checking to see if they were actually used to get some sleep before the flight. They will also review UPS approach procedures, including flying the LOC 18 approach in another UPS A300, to check the procedures they use, to better be able to determine if the accident crew deviated from those procedures.

FO Shanda Fanning was an accomplished aerobatics pilot. She also piloted President George W Bush while he was in office. She flew a Beechjet 400 (or Hawker if you prefer) for Triton Boats at the time GW Bush flew as her passenger.

I have to believe she was an amazingly gifted pilot for the Secret Service to clear her to fly a president while in office.

Not that it matters, but would she have used the call sign "Air Force One" with the President on board????

I don't know if the A300 avionics are capable of displaying the data and/or guidance necessary to do a CDA on a localizer approach.

Quoting rcair1 (Reply 208):Since I'm not qualified with any a/c that have this level of AP and AT, how would this work with no ILS. Wouldn't the AP and AT just respond to the altitude the AP was set to? If that were the case - it just amounts to controlling the descent with a knob rather than a yoke (the 300 does have a yoke, not a side stick).

That's pretty much it, yes. What's interesting is that the autopilot was still engaged so close to the ground - it would not be usual to use it below the minimums.

Quoting aeroncachamp (Reply 211):Would it be significant that the NTSB vice-chairman said, during a news blurb, that they would be checking the last 72 hours of the activities of the the crew?

No, that's normal. The NTSB wants to get a picture of what the pilots were doing in the days prior to the accident in order to see whether fatigue might be a factor. So they look at when they were on or off duty, what they might have done in their off time, etc.

Quoting mercure1 (Reply 213):If the ADSB-out track plots are to be believed. The avg descent rate from 10kft to time of init impact ~ 5:50A, is apprx 1200'/min or a gradient something close to 410'/nm.

Quoting Mir (Reply 218):
I don't know if the A300 avionics are capable of displaying the data and/or guidance necessary to do a CDA on a localizer approach.

You don't need to display any guidance. You just have to figure out what descent rate you need for a given speed and use your VS selector to dial that in. Easier to do if you use ATHR to hold a configured state all the way down but that's how we do it on the 737. It's pretty simple arithmetic and really only varies by 100 fpm or so so it's easy to correct.

Our technique is .5nm back from the FAF dial in 50ft above the MDA and set 800fpm in the VS selector and engage VS. Then correct to make sure you hit each crossing altitude all the way down.

CDA non precision approaches have been the standard at European airlines for decades, mainly because of the much more stable nature of a CDA compared to 'dive and drive'. A conventional non precision (VOR/NDB/LOC) approach flown as a CDA does not require any of the new fancy RNP/GPS guidance by the way. They can be flown in basic autoflight modes like LOC (in this case) and V/S.

As was mentioned somewhere earlier, it will be interesting to see which method UPS uses.

Quoting YYZatcboy (Reply 218):You don't need to display any guidance. You just have to figure out what descent rate you need for a given speed and use your VS selector to dial that in.

At the approach speed of 140 knots that they were flying, the descent rate for the approach is listed as 813fpm as per the Jepp plate. Since V/S mode can't be selected that precisely (at least on any plane I've come across), do you use 800 or 900? If you use 900, you'll end up low at the intermediate step-down, and if you use 800 you'll end up high and have to increase the descent rate after the intermediate step-down to compensate. Neither seems like a great solution.

Quoting YYZatcboy (Reply 218):Our technique is .5nm back from the FAF dial in 50ft above the MDA

The problem I could see with this is that it offers no protection for the step-down fix.

I've got no problem with the principle of the CDA (and I do fly them when the avionics allow, but the avionics in the airplane I fly don't allow it on a localizer-based approach), but if I'm going to be expected to fly a precise track I need to have some sort of verification that I'm on that track, and waiting until a passing a fix to figure out if I did it right or not just doesn't seem good enough. I either need a glidepath indicator or some sort of FPA indicator where I could set in the 3.28 degree path and follow that. In the absence of that, my technique is to set the altitude selector to the each intermediate altitude as it comes up, and use a VS slightly greater than what is required to ensure that I don't end up high at a step-down fix. Once I'm past the step-down fix, set the altitude selector to the next altitude and continue. It's technically a dive-and-drive, but without so much diving (which I agree isn't a good idea).

The more details I keep reading from this, I keep coming around to the idea that they simply had the wrong altimeter setting and thought they had more altitude. Everything else is coming up "normal" or "as expected".

Quoting Bruce (Reply 224):The more details I keep reading from this, I keep coming around to the idea that they simply had the wrong altimeter setting and thought they had more altitude. Everything else is coming up "normal" or "as expected".

The only obvious way to mess up an altimeter setting is to not reset it coming out of the flight levels. I believe the altimeter setting that night was 29.99, which is only going to produce a 70 ft difference from 29.92. Possible, sure? The only issue that caused the incident, doubtful

Quoting Mir (Reply 223):
The problem I could see with this is that it offers no protection for the step-down fix.

Sorry I was not clear, lots of approaches without intermediate fixes after the FAF in Canada. (Step downs are prior). You set the ALT SEL for each step along the way to meet restrictions if there are fixes between the FAF and the threshold.

Quoting Mir (Reply 223):At the approach speed of 140 knots that they were flying, the descent rate for the approach is listed as 813fpm as per the Jepp plate. Since V/S mode can't be selected that precisely (at least on any plane I've come across), do you use 800 or 900?

Toggle between -800 and -850 to keep it on the path. (800 fpm get a touch high drop to 850 get on path back to 800). At least that's how I have seen it done in sim training.

(I'm a dispatcher and both us and the pilot groups were given training when we switched to CDAs because of the effect on the operation and using these as a basis for alternate selection and weather watch etc... Even got sim training on it)

Quoting 777STL (Reply 226):I'm not all that familiar with the A300, but surely it has a radio altimeter, no?

It does, but it doesn't do anything for you as far as how you fly the plane. Where it ties into this whole thing is with the GPWS warning - the lower the radar altimeter reading, the more sensitive the GPWS is (i.e. while it may take a descent rate of 3000fpm to trigger the sink rate warning when the radar altimeter reads 1500 feet, if the radar altimeter read 100 feet then it would only take a descent rate of 1200fpm to trigger the same warning - those numbers are approximate, so don't take them as gospel, but the principle holds).

Quoting hivue (Reply 228):Would a pilot be more inclined or less inclined to do this for an unusual approach at night that they may have seldom/never flown before?

I would be more inclined to use the autopilot for the approach, but once I got to the minimums and had the runway in sight I'd turn it off - it's a whole lot easier to fly visually using the controls than it is to fly visually by twisting knobs and/or pushing buttons.

Quoting YYZatcboy (Reply 229):Toggle between -800 and -850 to keep it on the path. (800 fpm get a touch high drop to 850 get on path back to 800).

But how would you know if you're high (or low) without some sort of glidepath indicator? That's my issue.

Also, our autopilot doesn't let us do 50 foot increments - we can only use 100s. Other types may vary, of course.

Maybe you should go out and get a couple of hundred hours of flight time. Then you will be able to understand the info as the NTSB presents it instead of jumping all over another a.netter when you don't know how to interpret NTSB terminology.

Are you sure? Only the audible warnings seem to be established as a fact at this time. The warnings could be false warnings. That's not what I believe, but it has not been ruled out and accordingly the NTSB is very careful with it's wording. I haven't watched the briefing, but your reference rather supports hivues view, who wasn't jumping all over you btw

This is more likely to be the area of focus: "The UPS cargo jet that crashed in Alabama on Wednesday, killing two crew members, was operating on autopilot until moments before impact, federal investigators said Saturday. The autopilot remained engaged even after an alert signaled to pilots that the plane was dropping too quickly." ~LA Times

And to the other poster, n1805bn, yes I agree that AT and AS being still engaged at this low altitude is the area of focus. But wouldn't the CVR be very telling here? Why doesn't NTSB tell us what, if anything, was said by the crew?

Doesn't the NTSB usually release such information early and then wait a year to make a determination?

Quoting aeroncachamp (Reply 237):But wouldn't the CVR be very telling here? Why doesn't NTSB tell us what, if anything, was said by the crew?

They may not be sure yet. CVR tapes are not recorded in a controlled recording studio with high end microphones and recording equipment. It often takes months to transcribe them accurately; it involves isolating their voices from the background noise and then careful and repeated listening by a team of experts. Something like the difference between the word "off" and "on" can be crucial, and there have been cases where investigators have debated over a single word like that for a long time.

On the other hand, they may have already decided that their conversation is not relevant, or the pilots may have not even said any more than they've already told us. A lot of CVR transcripts are pretty "boring" and don't really enlighten the accident at all; it'll just be routine callouts and then impact. If that happened here, they wouldn't release anything they didn't consider relevant until the full CVR was transcribed.

Thank you moose135 and spacecadet. True, I haven't listened to the briefings, or even local news yesterday, as I haven't had time to do so. I don't usually follow aircraft accidents very closely, but this one is in my hometown, Birmingham, although I officially live in Vestavia, AL or more precisely, Cahaba Heights, but both are in metro B'ham.

At around 5am I'm wondering why the one tower person didn't watch the approach with binoculars and warn the crew of a low approach?

Most controllers have limited knowledge of actually flying an airplane. Their job is not flying. It would be difficult at best to watch this approach through binoculars and make suggestions to the pilots. Most controllers do not have any flight expereince nor a pilots license.

In fact, one of the controllers at my local airport is a former neighbor and he has never in his life flown--in any plane--ever. He's terrified of flying.

If I was in the cockpit I would not take kindly to a controller telling me how to fly. In my experience they often have little knowledge of specific aircraft capabilities, what equipment is on board and also they have no idea of the personal limits of that particular crew.

I have had several cases where a controller asked me to climb, decend, speed up or slow down that were either outside the capabilities of the plane or I was not comfortable with for various reasons.

I think most people are unaware that pilots are under no oligation to do what the controller requests if said pilot feels it is not in his / her best interest and communicates that to the controller.

I have refused many requests and told controllers no when asked. Its their job to figure out another way. I have no problem telling a controller NO. I don't even need an explanation. "Unable to comply" is all that s needed to be said.

I think most people feel pilots are required to follow all controller requests as law. Not true at all. I have even encountered many pilots who do not realize they can say no......seems to be overlooked in training.

So back to the binocular comment......pilots would not tolerate a controller telling them how to fly myself included. Controllers have a specific job but its not realistic to think they visually watch every approach and make suggestions to the pilots. This isn't the Navy and carrier operations.

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 239):But wouldn't the CVR be very telling here? Why doesn't NTSB tell us what, if anything, was said by the crew?

They may not be sure yet. CVR tapes are not recorded in a controlled recording studio with high end microphones and recording equipment. It often takes months to transcribe them accurately;

Also, everyday conversation is not like a play or a movie screenplay. People don't normally talk that way. It may take a lot of study for the NTSB to decide what the crew actually were trying to communicate in certain parts of the recording.

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 243):It's almost as if nothing other than that was said in the cockpit in the last minute of the flight.

Maybe they were just following the rules on quiet/sterile cockpit below 10K feet. If they're in landing configuration and the checklist has been completed we shouldn't expect to hear anything but the required callouts.

Quoting ttailsteve (Reply 241):So back to the binocular comment......pilots would not tolerate a controller telling them how to fly myself included. Controllers have a specific job but its not realistic to think they visually watch every approach and make suggestions to the pilots. This isn't the Navy and carrier operations.

This brings to mind the Eastern L1011 that crashed in the everglades. As I recall, the fact that he was low and descending was clearly visible to the approach controller, but he did not communicate this fact to the flight crew in a way that would draw their attention directly to the problem. I would assume though that any flight crew would welcome a call questioning something they were doing that was likely to result in a crash.

Ironically one of my jr highschool teachers was a controller on duty the night 401 plowed in. He was not "the" controller. I was obcessed with flying and he was kind enough to speak with me. The trama from that accident and the everyday stress in general led him to another career path about 2 years later.

This was a non precision approach. The pilots couldn't have been alseep. The plane didnt automatically configure itself for landing, make contact w the tower, accept and repeat a landing clearance (we know the plane was cleared to land) and make the required step downs and or decent to the runway.

They were awake. How awake we don't know but awake enough the plane was on the extended centerline making an approach and was configured for landing.

Even a full auto land requires pilot input. The plane doesn't take itself out of cruise when its close to the destination and it doesn't have a clue which runway until told by the pilots. It doesn't automatically lower the gear and the many other configuration changes needed for landing. All of this requires pilot control. Yes, planes make auto landings but its really more semi-auto. A pilot IS needed even on an auto land. (L1011 I believe was the first fully cert catIII auto land)

Had the plane reached B'ham and continued flying at cruise altitude w no response from the crew, then a valid assumption of being asleep could be made. There have been commercial flights where both pilots have fallen asleep and kept on going at cruise.

Not here.

I am alittle disappointed in the comments of a sexual relationship or love affair stated above. How absurd. Both pilots were highly regarded, professional and married. Its really taking it to another even to say an "April - December" romance may have been a factor. Yes, plenty of pilots have relationships. Does it happen inflight during cruise on a cargo flight. Who knows. Im sure somewhere among the gazillions of cargo flights its happened. However, a little common sense? Really? Take the plane out of cruise, contact the tower, configure the plane for landing, and then wait to short final to unbuckle and have have inappropriate time? No way.

Everyhting I have read, researched and some little tid bits from a friend that had flown with the FO in the past, shows both pilots consentious, professional and well above average pilots.

The FO was an accomplished acrobatic pilot and the Capt was a former Marine--honorably served our country.

I can say definitively no nookie on short final was taking place and be confidant im 100 percent right. CVR or Not.

Quoting aeroncachamp (Reply 240):At around 5am I'm wondering why the one tower person didn't watch the approach with binoculars and warn the crew of a low approach?

It would be very difficult to visually discern the altitude between a somewhat distant hill and a landing airplane at night. There is limited depth perception looking at essentially a moving set of lights, and the terrain may be close to invisible.

Even if it was possible, controllers don't have time to babysit every approach (even at 5am). If you overload them with largely useless tasks, they are more likely to have to rush the important ones.

Quoting LTC8K6 (Reply 243):It's almost as if nothing other than that was said in the cockpit in the last minute of the flight.

And it may not have been. Every airline has slightly different procedures but once the briefing is over, the before landing checklist is complete and the airplane is properly configured for final approach, there's usually not much said after that, if anything. It's a sensitive phase of flight so the last thing either pilot wants to do is distract from the act of actually flying.

From the 500 feet callout, which coincides with the completion of the before-landing checklist, nothing else is said until touchdown.

I didn't watch the briefings so I'm not sure if the NTSB said the approach/landing briefing and checklists were all completed, but I'm assuming people would be jumping all over that if not. Assuming they were done, then the pilots wouldn't have had any more to say in the final minute of flight.

I think it indicates they thought they were on a normal approach. So far all indications are pointing to that and have been since the beginning. Those trees seemed to sneak up on them...

Quoting hivue (Reply 242):Also, everyday conversation is not like a play or a movie screenplay. People don't normally talk that way.

That's true also. I remember reading something once from the guy whose job it was to transcribe the Nixon White House tapes, and he said he really had to get into the heads of the people who were talking to try to figure out context, because people actually speak in fits and starts, rarely making complete sentences and saying things that often only make sense if you know the history of the two people conversing. That's true of any two people, including pilots.

Quoting ttailsteve (Reply 241):Most controllers have limited knowledge of actually flying an airplane. Their job is not flying. It would be difficult at best to watch this approach through binoculars and make suggestions to the pilots. Most controllers do not have any flight expereince nor a pilots license.

In fact, one of the controllers at my local airport is a former neighbor and he has never in his life flown--in any plane--ever. He's terrified of flying.

Yeah, you're really not well versed here. I would say at least a 1/3 to 1/2 of the controllers that I know are licensed pilots. In fact, I know several that are former regional pilots who walked away for better job security. One of my co-workers flies Citations on the side, and I've had the pleasure of flying alongside him.

While many of us do not have licenses, many of us do....several ratings in my case. Your neighbor's situation is, frankly, almost unheard of. What person that is terrified of flying wakes up one day and decides to control airplanes for a living?

Quoting moose135 (Reply 238):In the NTSB briefing, they said that there was not a warning in the tower about the aircraft descending too low, however they need to analyze the flight path as well as the software that generates the tower warning, to see if in fact there should have been a warning, and if so, why it wasn't generated.

This will be interesting....in fact I'm really intrigued. If anything, the low altitude alert can be extra sensitive at times.

Quoting mcoatc (Reply 250): If anything, the low altitude alert can be extra sensitive at times.

I've gotten a low-altitude alert while on a localizer-only approach even from flying the approach normally (i.e. above the appropriate minimum altitude for that segment of the approach). It was daytime, so I could see everything and just continued to the airport, but I thought it was kind of strange that flying an approach properly could lead to such an alert, as if it had been nighttime or in IMC the warning would have very likely led me to go around.

Quoting Mir (Reply 251):I've gotten a low-altitude alert while on a localizer-only approach even from flying the approach normally

A low altitude alert will also be generated for excessive sink rate. If the computer feels the A/C is descending too rapidly (not sure what the exact calculation/figure is) the low altitude alert will/should also sound.

The computer is not "smart" enough to differentiate one rate-of-decent vs. another based on the type of approach be flown.

For example when A/C flies a visual approach to one of our runways, for noise, the PAPI have a slightly higher glide path vs. the ILS glide path which has a normal 3 degrees. On the visual, at about a 3 mile final, a low altitude alert will occur because the A/C has a higher sink rate.

Quoting Mir (Reply 251):I've gotten a low-altitude alert while on a localizer-only approach even from flying the approach normally (i.e. above the appropriate minimum altitude for that segment of the approach). It was daytime, so I could see everything and just continued to the airport, but I thought it was kind of strange that flying an approach properly could lead to such an alert, as if it had been nighttime or in IMC the warning would have very likely led me to go around.

Quoting Mir (Reply 247):When below minimums, it should really be a go-around, unless you have all the terrain in sight and can maintain separation visually (which rules out anything at night).

Our company policy(not UPS)dictates that if we get one at night regardless of what we see, we have to go around and try it again. It never made much sense to me if we were in the clear at night but I could definitely see why after this accident. I haven't gotten one at night yet, I've briefed it going into mountainous terrain. I know I won't think twice about it no matter where it happens.

That's a good explanation of it. Basically the descent rate from the FAF to the TCH is in the FMS that approximates a glideslope/glidepath equivalent. For this particular runway the decent rate would have been about 347 ft/nm from BASKN based on a 3.28 degree slope. Even if they had passed through the level segment which assumes a rate of 342 ft/nm you're still a lot closer to the airport at impact. Over the 4.7 miles you should wind up about 24 feet below the PAPI which has a crossing height of 48 feet which still would have given them 24 feet at the threshold. A bounce for sure, but I think it demonstrates how far they were off on the approach to impact half a mile away.

Quoting YYZatcboy (Reply 254):They program a waypoint at the button of the runway, and set a requested angle in the FMC. That displays the guidance.

See, our avionics let us do that (or actually they do it for us), but only for non-localizer-based approaches - I don't think we can even display any vertical guidance other than an ILS (or LDA) glideslope when tracking a localizer. So even if we could put it in the FMC, it wouldn't do anything for us. Granted, our system isn't on the cutting edge of technology by any means, and I know that newer systems are different and more capable. But I have to adapt my technique to what the airplane can actually do.

"At 9s to the end of recording there was the first sound of impact. The aircraft had hit trees about 1.15nm from the runway. Final impact with rising ground took place 0.8nm from the runway threshold. If the aircraft had followed the correct vertical profile over that low hill, the ground clearance is only about 100ft, so the aircraft does not have to be dramatically low to hit it, but the PAPIs would have been showing four reds if it was that low. - See more at: http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/le...we-wake-up/#sthash.YsGXUXn0.dpuf"

Only 100 ft at night? That's not much room for error. Sounds to me like an accident waiting to him, these poor guys were the ones who got it.

Approach incidents are lining up: 2007 Thomsonfly at Bournemouth, UK; 2009 Turkish Airlines at Amsterdam; 2013 Asiana at San Francisco, and now UPS at Birmingham. The first two were ILS-coupled but the speed decreased unnoticed. In the second two, the crew didn’t have electronic glideslope guidance and both aircraft descended below the approach profile to impact.

The risk of accidents on non-precision approaches has always been more than three times that of precision. Is it time to ban them, or do we train pilots properly for them?

Two of those accidents weren't non-precision approaches, so to suggest banning non-precision approaches seems a strange reaction. I'm not familiar with the Bournemouth incident (and I couldn't find anything on it with a quick search), but one common thread in both the Turkish and Asiana accidents is inappropriate monitoring and automation management by the crew - the fact that the automation was on through this crash suggests that something similar might be the case here. That concern is nothing new - it's been talked about for several years. That, IMO, would be the better place to start.

Quoting spacecadet (Reply 249):I think it indicates they thought they were on a normal approach.

So they are just unaware that they are too low, for whatever reason, and basically calmly fly into the hill?

With the info we have so far, they don't appear to do anything at all in reaction to the sink rate warning or in reaction to hitting the trees. Except that a few seconds after the warning, one of them calls out that the runway is in sight.

I understand that the controller might not have had a good line of sight, etc, but at 5am appx at BHM if that was the only traffic what should the controller be doing? Looking at the aircraft on final approach with binoculars? Without binoculars? Or doing what else?

Would a controller at night who has landed smaller aircraft on runway 18 be able to tell if an aircraft is too low?

This is one of the "perks" of flying out here in the mid east. I do on average 4-5 non precision approaches and 1-2 visual/circle to lands per week. The reason for this is the terrain in Turkey isn't suitable for ILS in some directions at eastern airports. So we get a lot of practice doing full procedure IFR approaches in a jet and we are able to keep current with our procedures. When I used to fly in the states, it was mostly ILS or GPS approaches and so like it or not, you may be current but you lose your proficiency. I don't know where the cargo boys fly into in the usa but am I right to assume the average US airline and cargo pilot doesn't do too many Non precision approaches??

Quoting Mir (Reply 259):Two of those accidents weren't non-precision approaches, so to suggest banning non-precision approaches seems a strange reaction. I'm not familiar with the Bournemouth incident (and I couldn't find anything on it with a quick search), but one common thread in both the Turkish and Asiana accidents is inappropriate monitoring and automation management by the crew - the fact that the automation was on through this crash suggests that something similar might be the case here. That concern is nothing new - it's been talked about for several years. That, IMO, would be the better place to start.

I moved back to B'ham in 1990 and in 1992 went to work as a business computer programmer for an insurance brokerage company (worked for them for 17 years.)

During that 17 years one of our maintenance men and I went out to VJ's On The Runway, a good meat-and-3 place with a good view of the runways at BHM. It was a time when the main runway was being lengthened, so everyone (including airlines) were using 18/36.

However, that was many moons ago. So my next question involves what someone recently posited, i.e. should these two pilots have waited ten minutes until the main runway at BHM re-opened after being down for one hour for maintenance on lights?

Or to put it another way, if neither of these pilots had ever landed on runway 18, could they be expected to use their charts, templates etc (as you can see I have no idea about how airliners do approaches, etc) to land on 18 at 5am in a perhaps sleep-deprived state? If not, sleep-deprived, then were their circadian rhythms disturbed? Or was 5am their usual end of shift, etc?

"At 9s to the end of recording there was the first sound of impact. The aircraft had hit trees about 1.15nm from the runway. Final impact with rising ground took place 0.8nm from the runway threshold. If the aircraft had followed the correct vertical profile over that low hill, the ground clearance is only about 100ft, so the aircraft does not have to be dramatically low to hit it,

Would anyone have a guess regarding the typical clearance distance above those trees on a normal approach? And, has it been determined how far below the tops of those trees that the impact was?

Here is the narrative of a NASA report from a F-100 crew which landed on 18 several years ago:

"Narrative:

The approach to runway 18 at bhm is marginally safe at best and is a setup for an accident at worst. Runway 5/23 was closed from XA00Z to XK00Z. As a result, we briefed the localizer runway 18 approach. It was my first officer's leg and neither of us had flown to this runway before. We were both acutely aware of the high terrain to the north of the field and paid particular attention to that fact in our approach briefing. The only depiction of the high terrain is on the airport page. The WX was clear with excellent visibility. Bhm approach cleared us for the visual but we indicated we wanted to intercept the final outside of baskin and fly the final part of the localizer 18 approach. Although not listed on the approach page, there is a PAPI on the left side of runway 18 which has been in use for about 1 yr. We calculated the appropriate vdp based on timing as well as on the ibxo DME. From the vdp it was clear to us that if the field was not in sight at the 1300 ft altitude at the ibxo 3.3 DME, it would not be possible to complete the approach safely. The PAPI was visible from the 3.3 DME and we began a 700 FPM descent when on GS. The first officer and I were both bothered by the close visual proximity of the ground while on the final stages of the approach. At about 1 mi from touchdown, a car passed under us on an east/west road. It was between 100 ft and 80 ft AGL. I again verified visually that we were on the PAPI glide path and that the glide path was visually correct with the runway visual presentation. It was clear that we were correct and the radio altimeter then began to show the ground dropping away a bit. We passed over the threshold at 50 ft AGL having been centered on the glide path the entire time. By use of the ft scale and the graphic presentation on the airport page, I believe the radio altimeter was accurate and that we were on or even slightly above the glide path when we had the 80-100 ft reading. How high are the trees on that hill? Although the approach and landing were uneventful, the following problems are presented: 1) there is no note about the extremely close proximity to high terrain when on this approach. The mandatory airport review page does not address runway 18 or runway 36. 2) there is no PAPI depicted in commercial chart despite having been in service for about 1 yr according to the bhm tower. 3) using a 3 degree GS and an aim point 1000 ft down runway 18, the 884 ft terrain 4000 ft north of the field calculates to a ht above ground of less than 100 ft. Trees are of course not included in this calculation. 4) runway 18 slopes down to the south and complicates the landing. A 7100 ft runway means a 6100 ft area to stop in and the downslope tends to have the effect of falling away from an aircraft in the flare. Unless you fly it on to the runway fairly aggressively, the distance could be even less. 5) NOTAM 11/023 reports runway 18 is ungrooved from 1550 to 2490. NOTAM 11/024 reports runway 36 is ungrooved from 4610-5550 ft. This obviously would have an affect on stopping under most instrument conditions, ie, a wet runway. I respectfully submit the following recommendation: discontinue use of runway 18 for company operations due to the high terrain present under the normal glide path. This is a dangerous approach so prohibit it. If the use of runway 18 is not prohibited, then I make the following recommendations: 1) include a picture of the runway 18 and runway 36 approachs on the mandatory airport review pages. 2) include specific notes on the operations pages about the high terrain to the north giving radio altimeter readings of 80-100 ft, 1 mi north of the field. 3) restrict use of runway 18 to day VFR conditions only and require the localizer runway 18 approach be flown. 4) update the bhm page forthwith to show the PAPI for runway 18. To be blunt, I will not fly to this runway in the WX or to a wet runway. If it is the only runway open in those conditions I will divert. Callback conversation with reporter revealed the following information: the reporter states that he has followed up with company, and they have issued a prohibition against using runways 18/36 except during day VFR conditions. He also stated that he did not see the rotating beacon on the hill approximately 1 mi from the runway. The GPWS indication did not show any red during the approach, but varied from green to amber. The first officer was flying the approach and the captain monitored the descent. He said that they did not exceed about 700 FPM rate throughout the final approach, and that after landing, both pilots debriefed their impressions to each other. They felt that they had taken prudent precautions, but that this approach was hazardous. " http://www.37000feet.com/report/4370...o-terrain-on-approach-to-runway-18

Also, seems there are issues with the Jeppesen chart used. In the chart notes (chart 11-2), it states "When VGSI inop, procedure not authorized at night." This leads one to believe this procedure is authorized at night when the PAPI is opperative, which it was. However, in the minimums section, it clearly states "NIGHT - NA". This is very contradicting. However, this is not the case on the gov't NOS charts. Did Jeppesen (which UPS uses) not update their charts? Was there an FDC NOTAM issued regarding night minimums? This is something that will be investigated.

Quoting BNAOWB (Reply 261):Would anyone have a guess regarding the typical clearance distance above those trees on a normal approach

Calculations that I have seen but have not confirmed following the 3.28 slope presented by the PAPI would have put them at that distance from the optics to the trees about, roughly, so to speak, maybe, close.
230 ft above the trees 2w 2r 3.28deg
170 ft above the trees 1w 3r 2.78deg
110 ft above the trees 0w 4r 2.28deg

That is looking at someone else's calculations that I have not checked. Take it for what it is worth.

Quoting PITrules (Reply 262):3) using a 3 degree GS and an aim point 1000 ft down runway 18, the 884 ft terrain 4000 ft north of the field calculates to a ht above ground of less than 100 ft.

The problem with those numbers is that it's not a 3 degree glidepath, it's a 3.28 degree glidepath.

Quoting PITrules (Reply 262):Also, seems there are issues with the Jeppesen chart used. In the chart notes (chart 11-2), it states "When VGSI inop, procedure not authorized at night." This leads one to believe this procedure is authorized at night when the PAPI is opperative, which it was. However, in the minimums section, it clearly states "NIGHT - NA". This is very contradicting. However, this is not the case on the gov't NOS charts. Did Jeppesen (which UPS uses) not update their charts?

As mentioned earlier, those may be airline-specific charts that have the NA for night. The fact that one airline might have that limitation does not necessarily mean that another airline does.

Quoting Mir (Reply 265):
The problem with those numbers is that it's not a 3 degree glidepath, it's a 3.28 degree glidepath.

The fact he used a 3.0 degree glade path as an example and not the published 3.28 tells me the 3.28 probably wasn't even published on the chart in 1999. Regardless, so the actual clearance is increased slightly, but so then is the descent rate.

Quoting Mir (Reply 265):
As mentioned earlier, those may be airline-specific charts that have the NA for night. The fact that one airline might have that limitation does not necessarily mean that another airline does.

That does not explain the discrepancy between the note and the minimums section.

We do both all engine and engine out missed approaches in various situations each time we go to the simulator. We also do low level rejects, which are a go-around well below minimums where momentary runway contact may occur.

I've done one real world missed this year and it involved a windshear.

Situations that require a missed/go-around include (but are not limited to): unstable approach (not properly configured by 1000 feet and/or not within speed Vref speed tolerance limits), windshear, traffic/other object on runway, unable to see the airport environment at minimums or subsequent loss of visual contact, and any other situation that would make it unsafe to continue.

In 1959 I was flying out of Midway and the crew aborted the prop plane takeoff. Twas a little bit thrilling, as I knew there was a fence and car traffic on the other side!! Plane was checked out for whatever the abort was about and we continued to South Bend (and it's not true what the coach said in the movie Rudy.....sometimes teams do beat them in their house!! Maybe not the day when Rudy tackled the Ga Tech qb.....but in the fall of '59 my team, Ga Tech, beat them in their house!!

A couple of weeks ago I was a passenger in an Airbus.....I think it was a 321 ..... if I remember the model number correctly. I noticed we were above the end of the runway at not much altitude and the pilot made a turn of about 45 degrees. The pilot came on the horn about 5 minutes later and announced that it was a missed approach. I found it exciting because there are at least two pros in the cockpit and you only really get to experience speed close to a cloud, another plane going the other way OR terra firma. The subsequent landing was greased on.

I got a ride in the backseat of an F100F in the early sixties; wonderful ride and wonderful pilot, later an astronaut. This may be a no-brainer but the hottest thing I solo-ed was either a Cessna150 or a Piper Colt (I forget the repective HP and my log book is not within my grasp at the moment.) Would an F100 be much more quickly responsive than an Airbus like the USP flew into BHM that resulted in the crash? I.e. responsive re a go-around when and if it was seen that a go-around was needed.

Yes, I'm an oldtimer! Entered the USAF at age 20 on Nov 18, 1959 and had a DOS (contracted date of separation) of Nov 17, 1962. Was a groundpounder in the 831st CivEngRon at George Air Patch for those 3 years, but was lucky and got some wonderful rides while hitching around the country, C130, B50 from then Hayes Aircraft in BHM, C47, T33, F100F and F104. The ADC tenant unit at this TAC base had F102's and then F106's, but they said that rides in those babies were hard to get even for ADC persons in their units who were groundpounders.

I was thinking that anyone landing a F100 Supre Sabre on runways 18/36 at BHM would have had to jam on the brakes! Then I thought F100 might have been a Fairchild; wuz too lazy to lookup F100 airliner, which brings up Fokker.

Was a passenger on a Fokker coming into BHM (but not on 18/36) one time maybe 20, 30, etc years or so ago. I didn't want to "curse" with any passengers present, so I waited to be last off the plane and then asked the pilot how he liked "this Fokker.'' Caught him by surprise, but he recovered in a second or two, and mentioned that the landing had been done by the auto landing system (and that his company mandated an auto landing every so many times per manual landings.) And I had heard some sounds which sounded quite mechanical, I..e a little zzzzzzzzzzzz here and another zzzzzzzzzzzzz there. Wasn't a bad landing!

Have there been any NTSB briefings lately? Any other news of this terrible accident? Or will it be about a year from now when we next hear anything? Does NTSB ever chastise the local airport authority? Or chastise the FAA?

the question then may be whether this time the NTSB should chasten someone. I think maybe the airport authority and/or FAA.....................it's like the FAA is a tombstone agency..................and again we have tombstones, two in this case. how many more stones must be cast?

Up until the day they parked the fleet, actually -- my first flight into BHM was on a US F100 the penultimate day before they grounded theirs (along with the MD-80's and former Metrojet 737-200's) in early 2002.

Thanks - I think there was some discussion that the cockpit was 100 yd from the crash site so that is where the 100yd reference originally came from. Like you - I don't see how they could have been ejected.